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xVE CENT CLASSIC 



No. 4th Grade. {Continued.) 

105. Stories and Rhymes of Birdland. I. 

106. Stories and Rhymes of Birdland. II. 

107. Stories and Rhymes of Flowerland. I. 

108. Stories and Rhymes of Flowerland. II. 
125. Selections from Longfellow. 



1 



5th Grade. 

Hawthorne's Three Golden Apples. 
Hawthorne's Miraculous Pitcher. 
The Chimaera. (Hawthorne.) 
Paradise of Children. (Hawthorne.) 
Audubon. 
Jefferson. 



102. Nathan Hale. 



6th Grade. 

15. Legend of Sleepy Hollow. (Irving.) 

16. 

32. 

39' 

50 



Rip Van Winkle, etc. (Irving.) 
King of the Golden River. (Ruskin.) 
We are Seven, etc. (Wordsworth.) 
Rab and His Friends. 
Christmas Eve, etc. (Irving.) 

54. Pied Piper of Hamelin. (Browning.) 

55. John Gilpin, etc. (Cowper.) 

57. Lady of the Lake. Canto I. (Scott.) 

66. Declaration of Independence. 

67. Thanatopsis and Other Poems. 

84. The Minotaur. (Hawthorne.) 

85. The Pygmies. (Hawthorne.) 



No. 6th Grade. {Continued. 

86. The Dragon's Teeth. (Hawthorne.; 

93. Great Stone Face. (Hawthorne.) 

94. Snow Image. (Hawthorne.) 
126. Selections from Longfellow. 

7th Grade. 

5. Story of Macbeth. 

6. Lays of Ancient Rome. — 1. 
10. Enoch Arden. (Tennyson.) 

17. Philip of Pokanoket. (Irving.) 

18. The Voyage, etc. (Irving.) 

. 40. Ancient Mariner. (Coleridge.) 
41. Evangeline. (Longfellow.) 

58. Lady of the Lake. Canto II. (Scot 

8th Grade. 

19. The Deserted Village. (Goldsmitl 

37. Othello, etc. (Lamb.) 

38. The Tempest, etc. (Lamb.) 
49. L' Allegro and Other Poems. 

51. As You Like It. (Shakespeare.) 

52. Merchant of Venice. (Shakespear 

53. Henry the Eighth. (Shakespeare 
56. The Elegy, etc. (Gray.) 

59. Lady of the Lake. Canto III. . 
65. Sir Roger De Coverley. 

80. Cotter's Saturday Night. (Burns 
88. Sir Launfal. (Lowell.) 
in. The Prisoner of Chillon. (Byron. 

112. Lady of the Lake. Canto IV, 

113. Lady of the Lake. Canto V. 

114. Lady of the Lake. Canto VI. 



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EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

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THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 



MILTON 



BY 

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 



WITH NOTES BY 

MARGARET A. EATON, A. B. 



EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY 

BOSTON 
New York Chicago San Francisco 



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H 



& 



38427 

Copyrighted 
By EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, 












INTRODUCTION. 



Probably no writer who ever lived has succeeded in pro- 
ducing such scholarly, and at the same time such popular and 
intensely interesting work, as Thomas Babington Macaulay. 
Certainly his essays are the most brilliant series in the English 
language. 

Macaulay's father was a Scotchman who had lived for some 
time in the West Indies and who, on his return to England, 
had joined the anti-slavery party. Thomas, his eldest son, was 
born at Rothley Temple, October 25, 1800. He was a remark- 
able child, with a passion for reading and a wonderful memory. 
He did not care for games nor for the companionship of boys of 
his own age, but amused himself by writing hymns, essays, 
poems and histories. At thirteen he wrote: — "The books 
which I am at present employed in reading to myself are, in 
English, Plutarch's " Lives," and Milner's " Ecclesiastical 
History;" in French, Fenelon's " Dialogues of the Dead." I 
shall send you back the volumes of Madam de Genlis's " Petit 
Romans " as soon as possible, and should be very much 
obliged for one or two more of them." 

In 1 81 8 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, and soon 
distinguished himself in literature and in debate. Mathematics 
he hated and studied only under protest, but he read everything 
from Plato to the latest novel. He could take in the contents 
of a page almost at a glance and finish a whole book while 
another was reading a chapter. What he read he never for- 
got. He could repeat "Paradise Lost" by heart, and two 
newspaper poems which he had once read in a Cambridge 
coffee-house, he was able to recall word for word forty years 
later. 



INTRODUCTK N 

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INTRODUCT] v. 

Baron. He was 

Macaulay's chief chara 
did anything .it often ma 

writings only pa - 
for it is always clear - 

.--nee. There is not a feeble line in a . 
first rule of all writing,'' he has said, " that rule to which every 
other ate, is that the - all 

be sac 
great 

n, 1825. 
The West Indies, 1S25. 
Th-. - ' 

Machiavelli, 1827 

.-: of Negroes, 1827. 
en, 1828. 
History, 1828. 
Hallarrws Constitutional Hi- 
.-eminent, I : 

-mment, 1829. 
I jlloquies on So . 
:'. Disabilities of the Jews, 1831. 
Moore's I I 5 1 . 

BoswelTs Life of Johnson, 1831. 

- f Hampden, 1S31. 
I M 

Horace Walpole, 1S33. 
Earl of Chatham, 1 : , 
- James Mackintosh, 1 B 

1 
Sir William Temple, 1838. 



vi. INTRODUCTION. 

Gladstone on Church and State, 1839. 

Lord Clive, 1840. 

Von Rouke, 1840. 

Leigh Hunt, 1841. 

Lord Holland, 1 84 1. 

Warren Hastings, 1841. 

Frederick the Great, 1842. 

Madam D'Arblay, 1843. 

Addison, 1843. 

Barrere, 1844. 

Earl of Chatham, 1844. 

BIOGRAPHIES (ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITTANICA.) 

Frances Atterbury, 1853. 
John Bunyan, 1 854. 
Oliver Goldsmith, 1856. 
Samuel Johnson, 1856. 
William Pitt, 1859. 

Lays of Ancient Rome, 1842. 

History of England from the Accession of James IL, 1848. 



MILTON. 

[Edinburgh Review, August \ 1825. ] 

Towards the close of the year 1823, Mr. 
Lemon, deputy keeper of the state papers, in 
the course of his researches among the presses 
of his office met with a large Latin manuscript. 
With it were found corrected copies of the s 
foreign dispatches written by Milton while he 
filled the office of secretary, and several papers 
relating to the Popish Trials and the Rye 
House Plot. The whole was wrapped up in 
an envelope, superscribed, To Mr. Skinner, 10 
MercJiant. On examination the large manu- 
script proved to be the long-lost essay on the 
Doctrines of Christianity, which according to 
Wood and Toland, Milton finished after the 
Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner, is 

1. Mr. Lemon, during the early part of the present century, made 
important improvements in the methods of preserving public documents in 
England. 

7. Milton was Latin secretary under Cromwell in 1649 an d hdcl this 
office until the Restoration. 

8. Popish Trials. In 1678 Titus Oates accused the Catholic nobility 
of conspiring against the Protestants and several of them were tried and 
executed. 

8. Rye House Plot. A conspiracy on the part of some Whigs to 
assassinate Charles II. 

10. Mr. Skinner. Milton's pupil and friend. To him he dedicated the 
beautiful sonnet on the loss of his sight. 

7 



8 MILTON. 

Skinner, it is well known, held the same 
political opinions with his illustrious friend. 
It is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon conjec- 
tures, that he may have fallen under the 

5 suspicions of the government during that 
persecution of the Whigs which followed the 
dissolution of the Oxford Parliament; and 
that, in consequence of a general seizure of his 
papers, this work may have been brought to 

10 the office in which it has been found. But 
whatever the adventures of the manuscript 
may have been, no doubt can exist that it is a 
genuine relic of the great poet. 

Mr. Sumner, who was commanded by his 

is Majesty to edit and translate the treatise, has 
acquitted himself of his task in a manner 
honorable to his talents and to his character. 
His version is not, indeed, very easy or 
elegant; but it is entitled to the praise of 

20 clearness and fidelity. His notes abound with 
interesting quotations, and have the rare merit 
of really elucidating the text. The preface is 
evidently the work of a sensible and candid 
man, firm in his own religious opinions, and 

2 5 tolerant towards those of others. 



6. 



Whigs. A political party devoted to the cause of popular rights. 



7. Oxford Parliament. In 1681 Parliament met at Oxford that the 
commons might not be influenced by the factious citizens of London. 



MILTON. 9 

The book itself will not add much to the 
fame of Milton. It is, like all his Latin works, 
well written, though not exactly in the style 
of the prize essays of Oxford and Cambridge. 
There is no elaborate imitation of classical 5 
antiquity, no scrupulous purity, none of the 
ceremonial cleanness which characterizes the 
diction of our academical Pharisees. The 
author does not attempt to polish and brighten 
his composition into the Ciceronian gloss andio 
brilliancy. He does not, in short, sacrifice 
sense and spirit to pedantic refinements. The 
nature of his subject compelled him to use 
many words 

"That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp." 15 

But he writes with as much ease and freedom 
as if Latin were his mother tongue ; and, where 
he is least happy, his failure seems to arise 
from the carelessness of a native, not from the 
ignorance of a foreigner. We may apply to 20 
him what Denham with great felicity says of 
Cowley. He wears the garb, but not the 
clothes, of the ancients. 

10. Marcus Tullius Cicero, (106-43 B.C.) A Roman orator noted fo 
the elegance of his style. 

15. Quintilian, (A.D. 35-96.) A famous Roman critic who wrote « 
complete treatise on rhetoric and oratory. The line is from Milton'^ 
eleventh sonnet. 

21. Denham and Cowley. Both noted poets of the first half of the 
seventeenth century. 



10 MILTON. 

Throughout the volume are discernible the 
traces of a powerful and independent mind, 
emancipated from the influence of authority, 
and devoted to the search of truth. Milton 

5 professes to form his system from the Bible 
alone; and his digest of scriptural texts is 
certainly among the best that have appeared. 
But he is not always so happy in his inferences 
as in his citations. 

10 Some of the heterodox doctrines which he 
avows seem to have excited considerable 
amazement, particularly his Arianism, and 
his theory on the subject of polygamy. Yet 
we can scarcely conceive that any person 

is could have read the " Paradise Lost" without 
suspecting him of the former; nor do we think 
that any reader, acquainted with the history of 
his life, ought to be much startled at the 
latter. The opinions which he has expressed 

20 respecting the nature of the Deity, the eternity 
of matter, and the observation of the Sabbath, 
might, we think, have caused more just 
surprise. 

But we will not go into the discussion of 

26 these points. The book, were it far more 
orthodox or far more heretical than it is, 

ia. Arianism. A theological system originating with Arius, a presbyter 
of Alexandria, denying the doctrine of the Trinity. 



MILTON. I I 

would not much edify or corrupt the present 
generation. The men of our time are not to 
be converted or perverted by quartos. A few 
more days and this essay will follow the 
" Defensio Populi " to the dust and silence of 5 
the upper shelf. The name of its author, and 
the remarkable circumstances attending its 
publication, will secure to it a certain degree 
of attention. For a month or two it will 
occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing- 10 
room, and a few columns in every magazine ; 
and it will then, to borrow the elegant 
language of the playbills, be withdrawn to 
make room for the forthcoming novelties. 

We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the 15 
interest, transient as it may be, which this 
work has excited. The dexterous Capuchins 
never choose to preach on the life and 
miracles of a saint till they have awakened the 
devotional feelings of their auditors by 20 
exhibiting some relic of him, — a thread of his 
garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop of his 

3. quartos. Books in which the leaves are folded twice, making four 
leaves. 

5. Defensio Populi. An answer to Salmasius's's " Defence of the 
King," attempting to justify the execution of Charles I. It was in writing 
this pamphlet that Milton brought on his blindness. 

17. Capuchins. A branch of the Franciscan order of monks in Italy, 
so called from the capuche, or cowl, worn in imitation of St. Francis. 
They lived entirely by begging. 



1 2 MILTON. 

blood. On the same principle, we intend to 
take advantage of the late interesting dis- 
covery, and, while this memorial of a great 
and good man is still in the hands of all, to 

6 say something of his moral and intellectual 
qualities. Nor, we are convinced, will the 
severest of our readers blame us if, on an 
occasion like the present, we turn for a short 
time from the topics of the day, to commemo- 

10 rate, in all love and reverence, the genius and 
virtues of John Milton, the poet, the states- 
man, the philosopher, the glory of English 
literature, the champion and the martyr of 
English liberty. 

is It is by his poetry that Milton is best 
known ; and it is of his poetry that we wish 
first to speak. By the general suffrage of 
the civilized world, his place has been assigned 
among the greatest masters of the art. His 

20 detractors, however, though outvoted, have 
not been silenced. There are many critics, 
and some of great name, who contrive in the 
same breath to extol the poems and to decry 
the poet. The works they acknowledge, 

25 considered in themselves, may be classed 
among the noblest productions of the human 
mind. But they will not allow the author to 



MILTON. 1 3 

rank with those great men, who, born in the 
infancy of civilization, supplied by their own 
powers the want of instruction ; and, though 
destitute of models themselves, bequeathed to 
posterity models which defy imitation. Milton, 6 
it is said, inherited what his predecessors 
created ; he lived in an enlightened age ; he 
received a finished education ; and we must, 
therefore, if we would form a just estimate of 
his powers, make large deductions in consider- 10 
ation of these advantages. 

We venture to say, on the contrary, 
paradoxical as the remark may appear, that 
no poet has ever had to struggle with more 
unfavorable circumstances than Milton. Hei 5 
doubted, as he has himself owned, whether he 
had not been born " an age too late." For 
this notion Johnson has thought fit to make 
him the butt of much clumsy ridicule. The 
poet, we believe, understood the nature of his 20 
art better than the critic. He knew that his 
poetical genius derived no advantage from the 
civilization which surrounded him, or from the 
learning which he had acquired ; and he 
looked back with something like regret to the 25 

17. " Paradise Lost," Book IX. line 44. 

18. Dr. Samuel Johnson, (1709-84.) One of the most famous names 
in litera-ure in the eighteenth century. His " Life of Milton "is colored 
by his Tory prejudices. 



1 4 MILTON. 

ruder age of simple words and vivid 
impressions. 

We think that as civilization advances 
poetry almost necessarily declines. There- 

5 fore, though we fervently admire those great 
works of imagination which have appeared in 
dark ages, we do not admire them the more 
because they have appeared in dark ages. 
On the contrary, we hold that the most 

10 wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a 
great poem produced in a civilized age. We 
cannot understand why those who believe in 
that most orthodox article of literary faith, 
that the earliest poets are generally the best, 

is should wonder at the rule as if it were the 
exception. Surely, the uniformity of the 
phenomenon indicates a corresponding uni- 
formity in the cause. 

The fact is, that common observers reason 

20 from the progress of the experimental sciences 
to that of the imitative arts. The improve- 
ment of the former is gradual and slow. Ages 
are spent in collecting materials, ages more in 
separating and combining them. Even when 

25 a system has been formed, there is still some- 
thing to add, to alter, or to reject. Every 
generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard 



MILTON. 1 5 

bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits 
that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, 
to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, 
the first speculators lie under great disadvan- 
tages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to 5 
praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellec- 
tual powers, speedily surpass them in actual 
attainments. Every girl who has read Mrs. 
Marcet's little dialogues on political economy 
could teach Montague or Walpole many 10 
lessons in finance. Any intelligent man may 
now, by resolutely applying himself for a few 
years to mathematics, learn more than the 
great Newton knew after half a century of 
study and meditation. is 

But it is not thus with music, with painting, 
or with sculpture. Still less is it thus with 
poetry. The progress of refinement rarely sup- 
plies these arts with better objects of imitation. 
It may indeed improve the instruments which 20 
are necessary to the mechanical operations of 

9. Mrs. Marcet, (1769-1858.) A writer on popular science and edu- 
cational subjects. 

10. Charles Montague, (1661-1715.) As Lord Halifax he was Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer under William III. and founder of the Bank of 
England. 

10. Sir Robert Walpole, (1676-1745.) Chancellor of the Exchequer 
and chief minister under George I. and George II. 

14. Sir Isaac Newton, (1642-1727.) One of the greatest of English 
philosophers. He discovered the law of gravitation. 



1 6 MILTON. 

the musician, the sculptor, and the painter. 
But language, the machine of the poet, is 
best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. 
Nations, like individuals, first perceive and 

5 then abstract. They advance from particular 
images to general terms. Hence the vocabu- 
lary of an enlightened society is philosophical; 
that of a half-civilized people is poetical. 

This change in the language of men is 

10 partly the cause and partly the effect of a 
corresponding change in the nature of their 
intellectual operations, of a change by which 
science gains and poetry loses. Generalization 
is necessary to the advancement of knowledge ; 

is but particularity is indispensable to the 
creations of the imagination. In proportion 
as men know more and think more, they look 
less at individuals and more at classes. They 
therefore make better theories and worse 

ao poems. They give us vague phrases instead 
of images, and personified qualities instead of 
men. They may be better able to analyze 
human nature than their predecessors. But 
analysis is not the business of the poet. His 

2 . 5 office is to portray, not to dissect. He may 
believe in a moral sense, like Shaftesbury; he 

26. Earl of Shaftesbury, (1671-1713.) Chiefly noted for his book 
" Characteristics" maintaining that everything which is, is for the best. 



MILTON. 17 

may refer all human actions to self-interest, 
like Helvetius ; or he may never think about 
the matter at all. His creed on such subjects 
will no more influence his poetry, properly so 
called, than the notions which a painter may 5 
have conceived respecting the lachrymal 
glands, or the circulation of the blood, will 
affect the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes of 
his Aurora. If Shakespeare had written a 
book on the motives of human actions, it is by 10 
no means certain that it would have been a 
good one. It is extremely improbable that it 
would have contained half so much able 
reasoning on the subject as is to be found in 
the " Fable of the Bees." But could Mande-is 
ville have created an Iago? Well as he 
knew how to resolve characters into their 
elements, would he have been able to combine 
those elements in such a manner as to make 
up a man, — a real, living, individual man? 20 

2. Helvetius, (1715-1771.) A French philosopher whose chief work 
was ordered to be burned by the hangman. He asserted that selfishness 
is the chief motive in human conduct. 

8. Niobe. A character in Greek mythology whose twelve children 
were slain by Diana and Apollo, and who, in consequence, wept until she 
became a stone. 

9. Aurora. The goddess of the dawn. 

15. Fable of the Bees. A work of Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1733) 
in which he tries to show that vice and luxury benefit society. 

16. Iago. A character in "Othello" and one of Shakespeare's most 
wonderful creations. 



1 8 MILTON. 

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can 
even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsound- 
ness of mind, if anything which gives so much 
pleasure ought to be called unsoundness. By 

5 poetry we mean not all writing in verse, nor 
even all good writing in verse. Our definition 
excludes many metrical compositions which, 
on other grounds, deserve the highest praise. 
By poetry we mean the art of employing 

10 words in such a manner as to produce an 
illusion on the imagination, the art of doing 
by means of words what the painter does by 
means of colors. Thus the greatest of poets 
has described it, in lines universally admired 

15 for the vigor and felicity of their diction, and 
still more valuable on account of the just 
notion which they convey of the art in which 
he excelled : — 

" As imagination bodies forth 
20 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name." 

These are the fruits of the " fine frenzy" 

which he ascribes to the poet, — a fine frenzy, 

25 doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, 

is essential to poetry; but it is the truth of 

madness. The reasonings are just; but the 

23. Midsummer Night's Dream, act v., sc. i. 



MILTON. 19 

premises are false. After the first supposi- 
tions have been made, everything ought to be 
consistent ; but those first suppositions require 
a degree of credulity which almost amounts to 
a partial and temporary derangement of the 5 
intellect. Hence of all people children are 
the most imaginative. They abandon them- 
selves without reserve to every illusion. 
Every image which is strongly presented to 
their mental eye produces on them the effect 10 
of reality. No man, whatever his sensibility 
may be, is ever effected by Hamlet or Lear as 
a little girl is affected by the story of poor 
Red Ridinghood. She knows that it is all 
false, that wolves cannot speak, that there are 15 
no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her 
knowledge she believes ; she weeps ; she 
trembles ; she dares not go into a dark room 
lest she should feel the teeth of the monster at 
her throat. Such is the despotism of the 20 
imagination over uncultivated minds. 

In a rude state of society men are children 
with a greater variety of ideas. It is therefore 
in such a state of society that we may expect 
to find the poetical temperament in its highest 25 
perfection. In an enlightened age, there will 
be much intelligence, much science, much 



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MILTON. 

his works do not resemble a lisping man or a 
modern ruin. We have seen in our own time 
great talents, intense labor, and long meditation 
employed in this struggle against the spirit of 

5 the age, and employed, we will not say 
absolutely in vain, but with dubious success 
and feeble applause. 

If these reasonings be just, no poet has 
ever triumphed over greater difficulties than 

10 Milton. He received a learned education; he 
was a profound and elegant classical scholar; 
he had studied all the mysteries of Rabbinical 
literature ; he was intimately acquainted with 
every language of modern Europe from which 

^either pleasure or information was then to be 
derived. He was perhaps the only great poet 
of later times who has been distinguished by 
the excellence of his Latin verse. The genius 
of Petrarch was scarcely of the first order ; 

20 and his poems in the ancient language, though 
much praised by those who have never read 
them, are wretched compositions. Cowley, 
with all his admirable wit and ingenuity, had 
little imagination ; nor indeed do we think 

7. This is probably a reference to the poet Wordsworth. 

12. Rabbinical literature. The writings of the Hebrew law-givers or 

rabbis. 

19. Petrach, 1304-1374^ One of the greatest of Italian poets, especi- 
ally celebrated for his very beautiful lyrics. 



MILTON. 23 

his classical diction comparable to that of 
Milton. The authority of Johnson is against 
us on this point. But Johnson had studied 
the bad writers of the middle ages till he had 
become utterly insensible to the Augustan & 
elegance, and was as ill qualified to judge 
between two Latin styles as a habitual 
drunkard to set up for a wine taster. 

Versification in a dead language is an 
exotic, a far-fetched, costly, sickly imitation of 10 
that which elsewhere may be found in 
healthful and spontaneous perfection. The 
soils on which this rarity flourishes are in 
general as ill suited to the production of vigor- 
ous native poetry as the flowerpots of a 15 
hothouse to the growth of oaks. That the 
author of the "Paradise Lost" should have 
written the " Epistle to Manso " was truly 
wonderful. Never before were such marked 
originality and such exquisite mimicry found 20 
together. Indeed, in all the Latin poems of 
Milton, the artificial manner indispensable to 
such works is admirably preserved, while, at 
the same time, his genius gives to them a 

5. Augustan. The reign of the first Roman Emperor Augustus 
(63 B.C. -14 A.D.) was called the Golden Age in literature. Horace, 
Vergil and Ovid were then at the height of their powers. 

18. Epistle to Manso. A Latin poem written by Milton when he 
was in Italy. 



24 MILTON. 

peculiar charm, an air of nobleness and free- 
dom, which distinguishes them from all other 
writings of the same class. They remind us 
of the amusements of those angelic warriors 
5 who composed the cohort of Gabriel: — 

" About him exercised heroic games 
The unarmed youth of heaven ; but nigh at hand 
Celestial armory, shields, helms, and spears, 
Hung high, with diamonds flaming and with gold." 

10 We cannot look upon the sportive exercises 
for which the genius of Milton ungirds itself, 
without catching a glimpse of the gorgeous 
and terrible panoply which it is accustomed 
to wear. The strength of his imagination 

15 triumphed over every obstacle. So intense 
and ardent was the fire of his mind, that it 
not only was not suffocated beneath the weight 
of fuel, but penetrated the whole superincum- 
bent mass with its own heat and radiance. 

20 It is not our intention to attempt anything 
like a complete examination of the poetry of 
Milton. The public has long been agreed as 
to the merit of the most remarkable passages, 
the incomparable harmony of the numbers, 

25 and the excellence of that style which no rival 
has been able to equal and no parodist to 

6. " Paradise Lost," Book IV., lines 551-54. 



MILTON. 2 5 

degrade, which displays in their highest 
perfection the idiomatic powers of the English 
tongue, and to which every ancient and every 
modern language has contributed something 
of grace, of energy, or of music. In the vasts 
field of criticism on which we are entering, 
innumerable reapers have already put their 
sickles. Yet the harvest is so abundant that 
the negligent search of a straggling gleaner 
may be rewarded with a sheaf. 10 

The most striking characteristic of the 
poetry of Milton is the extreme remoteness of 
the associations by means of which it acts on 
the reader. Its effect is produced, not so 
much by what it expresses, as by what it 15 
suggests ; not so much by the ideas which it 
directly conveys, as by other ideas which are 
connected with them. He electrifies the mind 
through conductors. The most unimaginative 
man must understand the Iliad. Homer gives 20 
him no choice, and requires from him no 
exertion, but takes the whole upon himself, 
and sets the images in so clear a light that it 
is impossible to be blind to them. The works 
of Milton cannot be comprehended or enjoyed 25 
unless the mind of the reader co-operate with 
that of the writer. He does not paint a 



26 MILTON. 

finished picture or play for a mere passive 
listener. He sketches, and leaves others to 
fill up the outline. He strikes the keynote, 
and expects his hearers to make out the 

5 melody. 

We often hear of the magical influence of 
poetry. The expression in general means 
nothing; but, applied to the writings of 
Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry 

10 acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in 
its obvious meaning than in its occult power. 
There would seem, at first sight, to be no 
more in his words than in other words. But 
they are words of enchantment. No sooner 

is are they pronounced, than the past is present 
and the distant near. New forms of beauty 
start at once into existence, and all the burial 
places of the memory give up their dead. 
Change the structure of the sentence ; substi- 

2otute one synonym for another, and the whole 
effect is distroyed. The spell loses its power; 
and he who should then hope to conjure with 
it would find himself as much mistaken as 
Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood 

25 crying, " Open Wheat," "Open Barley," to 
the door which obeyed no sound but " Open 

24. Cassim. A character in the "Arabians Nights Tale of the Forty 
Thieves." * 



MILTON. 27 

Sesame." The miserable failure of Dryden in 
his attempt to translate into his own diction 
some parts of the " Paradise Lost" is a 
remarkable instance of this. 

In support of these observations we mays 
remark, that scarcely any passages in the 
poems of Milton are more generally known, or 
more frequently repeated, than those which 
are little more than muster rolls of names. 
They are not always more appropriate ori 
more melodious than other names. But they 
are charmed names. Every one of them is 
the first link in a long chain of associated 
ideas. Like the dwelling place of our infancy 
revisited in manhood, like the song of our 15 
country heard in a strange land, they produce 
upon us an effect wholly independent of their 
intrinsic value. One transports us back to a 
remote period of history. Another places us 
among the novel scenes and manners of a 2 o 
distant region. A third evokes all the dear 
classical recollections of childhood, — the 
schoolroom, the dog-eared Vergil, the holiday, 

1. Open Sesame. An Indian grain. The name is used in the same 
tale as a password to the robbers' cave. 

1. John Dryden, (1631-1700/ Oae of the most celebrated poets of 
the seventh century. He wrote a sacred opera based on the " Paradise 
Lost " entitled the " State of Innocence." 

9. " Paradise Lost," Book I., line 39. 



28 MILTON. 

and the prize. A fourth brings before us the 
splendid phantoms of chivalrous romance, — 
the trophied lists, the embroidered housings, 
the quaint devices, the haunted forests, the 

5 enchanted gardens, the achievements of 
enamored knights, and the smiles of rescued 
princesses. 

In none of the works of Milton is his 
peculiar manner more happily displayed than 

ioin the "Allegro" and the " Penseroso." It 
is impossible to conceive that the mechanism 
of language can be brought to a more 
exquisite degree of perfection. These poems 
differ from others as ottar of roses differs from 

15 ordinary rose water, the close-packed essence 
from the thin, diluted mixture. They are, 
indeed, not so much poems as collections of 
hints, from each of which the reader is to 
make out a poem for himself. Every epithet 

20 is a text for a stanza. 

The "Comus" and the "Samson Agon- 
istes" are works which, though of very 
different merit, offer some marked points of 
resemblance. Both are lyric poems in the 

25 form of plays. There are, perhaps, no two 

io. Allegro and Penseroso are two Italian words meaning mirthful 
and melancholy. They are among the earliest and most beautiful of 
Milton's poems. 



MILTON. 29 

kinds of composition so essentially dissimilar 
as the drama and the ode. The business of 
the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, 
and to let nothing appear but his characters. 
As soon as he attracts notice to his personals 
feelings, the illusion is broken. The effect is 
as unpleasant as that which is produced on 
the stage by the voice of the prompter or the 
entrance of a scene-shifter. Hence it was 
that the tragedies of Byron were his least 10 
successful performances. They resemble those 
pasteboard pictures invented by the friend of 
children, Mr. Newberry, in which a single 
movable head goes round twenty different 
bodies, so that the same face looks out upon 15 
us, successively, from the uniform of a hussar, 
the furs of a judge, and the rags of a beggar. 
In all the characters, — patriots and tyrants, 
haters and lovers, — the frown and sneer of 
Harold were discernible in an instant. But 2 o 
this species of egotism, though fatal to the 
drama, is the inspiration of the ode. It is the 
part of the lyric poet to abandon himself, 
without reserve, to his own emotions. 



13. Mr. Newberry. A publisher of children's books. Goldsmith was 
one of his writers and mentions him in the " Vicar of Wakefield." 

20. Childe Harold. The most famous of Byron's poems; describes the 
scenes through which the poet passed in his travels. 



30 MILTON. 

Between these hostile elements many great 
men have endeavored to affect an amalgama- 
tion, but never with complete success. The 
Greek drama, on the model of which the 
5 "Samson" was written, sprang from the ode. 
The dialogue was ingrafted on the chorus, and 
naturally partook of its character. The 
genius of the greatest of the Athenian drama- 
tists co-operated with the circumstances under 
10 which tragedy made its first appearance. 
yEschylus was, head and heart, a lyric poet. 
In his time the Greeks had far more inter- 
course with the East than in the days of 
Homer; and they had not yet acquired that 
15 immense superiority in war, in science, and in 
the arts, which, in the following generation, 
led them to treat the Asiatics with contempt. 
From the narrative of Herodotus it should 
seem that they still looked up, with the 
20 veneration of disciples, to Egypt and Assyria. 
At this period, accordingly, it was natural that 
the literature of Greece should be tinctured 
with the Oriental style. And that style, we 



ii. iEschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were the three great Greek 
writers of tragedy and lived in the fifth century B.C. Only a few of their 
dramas survive. 

i8. Herodotus, (484 B.C.) The earliest of Greek historians and often 
called the ' father of history." He wrote an account of the Persian wars. 



MILTON. 3 1 

think, is discernible in the works of Pindar 
and /Eschylus. The latter often reminds us 
of the Hebrew writers. The Book of Job, 
indeed, in conduct and diction, bears a 
considerable resemblance to some of his 5 
dramas. Considered as plays, his works are 
absurd ; considered as choruses, they are 
above all praise. If, for instance, we examine 
the address of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon 
on his return, or the description of the seven 10 
Argive chiefs, by the principles of dramatic 
writing, we shall instantly condemn them as 
monstrous. But if we forget the characters, 
and think only of the poetry, we shall admit 
that it has never been surpassed in energy ie 
and magnificence. Sophocles made the 
Greek drama as dramatic as was consistent 
with its original form. His portraits of men 
have a sort of similarity ; but it is the 
similarity not of a painting, but of a bas-relief . 20 
It suggests a resemblance ; but it does not 
produce an illusion. Euripides attempted to 
carry the reform further. But it was a task 

I. Pindar, (520 B.C.) The earliest and greatest Greek lyric poet. 

9. Agamemnon. A tragedy of JEschylus. Clytemnestra, Agamem- 
non's wife, slew him on his return from Troy. 

II. Argive chiefs. The seven princes who made war upon Thebes 
described in another drama of /Eschylus. 



32 MILTON. 

far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any 
powers. Instead of correcting what was bad, 
he destroyed what was excellent. He sub- 
stituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for 
5 good odes. 

Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides 
highly ; much more highly than, in our opin- 
ion, Euripides deserved. Indeed, the caresses 
which this partiality leads our countrymen 
10 to bestow on " sad Electra's poet," sometimes 
remind us of the beautiful Queen of Fairyland 
kissing the long ears of Bottom. At all events, 
there can be no doubt that this veneration for 
the Athenian, whether just or not, was injuri- 
ous to the " Samson Agonistes." Had Milton 
taken yEschylus for his model, he would have 
given himself up to the lyric inspiration, and 
poured out profusely all the treasures of his 
mind, without bestowing a thought on those 
20 dramatic properties which the nature of the 
work rendered it impossible to preserve. In 
the attempt to reconcile things in their own 
nature inconsistent, he has failed, as every one 
else must have failed. We cannot identify 

io. Electra's poet. Euripides. Electra is the heroine of one of his 
plays. 

i2. Bottom. The clown in " Midsummer Night's Dream." In act III. 
scene I., Obcron, king of the fairies, first disguises him with an- ass's 
head and then causes his queen, Titania, to fall in love with him. 



MILTON. 33 

ourselves with the characters, as in a good 
play. We cannot identify ourselves with the 
poet, as in a good ode. The conflicting 
ingredients, like an acid and an alkali mixed, 
neutralize each other. We are by no means 5 
insensible to the merits of this celebrated piece, 
to the severe dignity of the style, the graceful 
and pathetic solemnity of the opening speech, 
or the wild and barbaric melody which gives 
so striking an effect to the choral passages. i 
But we think it, we confess, the least success- 
ful effort of the genius of Milton. 

The " Comus " is framed on the model of 
the Italian masque, as the " Samson " is framed 
on the model of the Greek tragedy. It isi» 
certainly the noblest performance of the kind 
which exists in any language. It is as far 
superior to the " Faithful Shepherdess" as the 
" Faithful Shepherdess" is to the " Aminta," 
or the " Aminta" to the " Pastor Fido." It 20 
was well for Milton that he had here no 
Euripides to mislead him. He understood 
and loved the literature of modern Italy. 
But he did not feel for it the same veneration 

14. Masque. A dramatic entertainment originating in Italy and acted 
by imaginary or allegorical personages. It was very popular in England 
during the latter part of the sixteenth century. 

20. " Faithful Shepherdess," " Aminta," and " Pastor Fido." All 
pastoral dramas; the first by John Fletcher, the other two by the Italian 
poets, Tasso and Guarini. 



34 



MILTON. 



) 



which he entertained for the remains of 
Athenian and Roman poetry, consecrated by 
so many lofty and endearing recollections. 
The faults, moreover, of his Italian predeces- 

s sors were of a kind to which his mind had a 
deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain 
style, sometimes even to a bald style; but 
false brilliancy was his utter aversion. His 
Muse had no objection to a russet attire ; but 

10 she turned with disgust from the finery of 
Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of 
a chimney sweeper on May Day. Whatever 
ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not 
only dazzling to the sight, but capable of 

is standing the severest test of the crucible. 

Milton attended in the "Comus" to the 
distinction which he afterwards neglected in 
the " Samson." He made his masque what it 
ought to be, essentially lyrical, and dramatic 

20 only in semblance. He has not attempted a 
fruitless struggle against a defect inherent in 
the nature of that species of composition ; and 
he has therefore succeeded, wherever success 
was not impossible. The speeches must be 

25 read as majestic soliloquies; and he who so 
reads them will be enraptured with their 

i2. The chimney sweeps in England celebrated the first of May by 
parading in fantastic costumes. 



MILTON. 35 

eloquence, their sublimity, and their music. 
The interruptions of the dialogue, however, 
impose a constraint upon the writer, and break 
the illusion of the reader. The finest passages 
are those which are lyric in form as well as ins 
spirit. " I should much commend," says the 
excellent Sir Henry Wotton in a letter to 
Milton, " the tragical part, if the lyrical did 
not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy 
in your songs and odes, whereunto, I mustio 
plainly confess to you, I have seen yet nothing 
parallel in our language." The criticism was 
just. It is when Milton escapes from the 
shackles of the dialogue, when he is discharged 
from the labor of uniting two incongruous 15 
styles, when he is at liberty to indulge his 
choral raptures without reserve, that he rises 
even above himself. Then, like his own Good 
Genius bursting from the earthly form and 
weeds of Thyrsis, he stands forth in celestial 20 
freedom ; he seems to cry exultingly, — 

" Now' my task is smoothly done, 
I can fly, or I can run," 

7. Sir Henry Wotton, (1568-1639.) A scholar and poet and provost 
of Eton College. 

9. Dorique. The Greek dialect of Sicily in which the exquisite pas- 
toral poems of Theocritus were written. 

20. Thyrsis. An attending spirit in " Comus " who assumes the dis- 
guise of a shepherd. Thyrsis was a favorite name for shepherds in the old 
classic pastorals. 

23. "Comus," lines 1012, 1013. 



36 MILTON. 

to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to 
bathe in the elysian dew of the rainbow, and 
to inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia, 
which the musky winds of the zephyr scatter 

e through the cedared alleys of the Hesperides. 

There are several of the minor poems of 

Milton on which we would willingly make a 

few remarks. Still more willingly would we 

enter into a detailed examination of that 

10 admirable poem, the " Paradise Regained," 
which, strangely enough, is scarcely ever 
mentioned except as an instance of the blind- 
ness of the parental affection which men of 
letters bear towards the offspring of their 

1S intellects. That Milton was mistaken in pre- 
ferring this work, excellent as it is, to the 
" Paradise Lost," we readily admit. But we 
are sure that the superiority of the " Paradise 
Lost" to the Paradise Regained " is not more 

•20 decided than the superiority of the " Paradise 
Regained " to every poem which has since 
made its appearance. Our Limits, however, 
prevent us from discussing the point at length. 
We hasten on to that extraordinary production 

2. Elysian. The Elysian Fields were the place of abode for the 
blessed spirits in Hades. 

5. Hesperides. The daughters of Hesperus and Atlas. They guarded 
the golden apples in the garden of the gods which lay on the extreme 
verge of the western ocean where day and night meet. 



MILTON. 37 

which the general suffrage of critics has placed 
in the highest class of human compositions. 

The only poem of modern times which can 
be compared with " Paradise Lost" is the 
"Divine Comedy." The subject of Milton, in 5 
some points, resembled that of Dante ; but he 
has treated it in a widely different manner. 
We cannot, we think, better illustrate our 
opinion respecting our own great poet, than 
by contrasting him with the father of Tuscan 10 
literature. 

The poetry of Milton differs from that of 
Dante as the hieroglyphics of Egypt differed 
from the picture writing of Mexico. The 
images which Dante employs speak for them- 15 
selves ; they stand simply for what they are. 
Those of Milton have a signification which is 
often discernible only to the initiated. Their 
value depends less on what they directly repre- 
sent than on what they remotely suggest. How- 20 
ever strange, however grotesque, may be the 

5. " Divine Comedy " The great epic of Mediaeval Christianity and 

the work of the greatest of Italian poets, Dante Alighieri ^1265-1321.) 

-He was a Florentine by birth but was banished for political reasons and 

died in exile. The poem describes his journey through Hell, Purgatory 

and Paradise. 

10. Tuscany. The province of Italy in which Florence is situated. 

13. Hieroglyphic. In the Egyptian picture-writing each picture was 
used as a symbol for a letter or syllable, while in other countries where 
this form of writing was used, the picture merely denoted the thing 
represented. 



38 MILTON. 

appearance which Dante undertakes to describe 
he never shrinks from describing it. He gives 
us the shape, the color, the sound, the smell, 
the taste ; he counts the numbers ; he 

5 measures the size. His similes are the illus- 
trations of a traveller. Unlike those of other 
poets, and especially of Milton, they are 
introduced in a plain, business-like manner; 
not for the sake of any beauty in the objects 

10 from which they are drawn; not for the sake 
of any ornament which they may impart to 
the poem ; but simply in order to make the 
meaning of the writer as clear to the reader 
as it is to himself. The ruins of the precipice 

15 which led from the sixth to the seventh circle 
of hell were like those of the rock which fell 
into the Adige on the south of Trent. The 
cataract of Phlegethon was like that of Aqua 
Cheta at the monastery of St. Benedict. The 

20 place where the heretics were confined in 
burning tombs resembled the vast cemetery 
of Aries. 

17. Adige. A river of northern Italy on which the city of Trent is 
situated. 

18. Phlegethon. A river of fire, one of the streams of Hades. 

19. St. Benedict, (A.D. 480.) The founder of Monasticism in the 
western world. His monastery was near Naples on Monte Cassino. 

22 Aries. A city of Provence in France celebrated for its remains of 
the Roman occupation. 



MILTON. 39 

Now let us compare with the exact details 
)f Dante the dim intimations of Milton. We 
vill cite a few examples. The English poet 
iad never thought of taking the measure of 
satan. He gives us merely a vague idea ofs 
/ast bulk. In one passage the fiend lies 
stretched out, huge in length, floating many a 
'ood, equal in size to the earthborn enemies 
">f Jove, or to the sea monster which the 
nariner mistakes for an island. When heio 
iddresses himself to battle against the guardian 
mgels, he stands like Teneriffe or Atlas : his 
stature reaches the sky. Contrast with these 
descriptions the lines in which Dante has 
described the gigantic specter of Nimrod.15 
1 His face seemed to me as long and as broad 
is the ball of St. Peter's at Rome; and his 
Dther limbs were in proportion; so that the 
Dank, which concealed him from the waist 
downwards, nevertheless showed so much of 20 
aim, that three tall Germans would in vain 
tiave attempted to reach to his hair." We are 
sensible that we do no justice to the admirable 
style of the Florentine poet. But Mr. Cary's 

12 Teneriffe. A volcano on an island off the African coast. " Para- 
iise Lost," Book I., lines 192-208. 

Atlas. A chain of lofty mountains in Northern Africa. 

15. Nimrod. A mighty hunter and reputed founder of the Assyrian 
Empire. Gen. X., 8-12. 



40 MILTON. 

translation is not at hand ; and our version, 
however rude, is sufficient to illustrate our 
meaning. 

Once more, compare the lazar house in the 

5 eleventh book of the " Paradise Lost" with 
the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton 
avoids the loathsome details, and takes refuge 
in indistinct but solemn and tremendous 
imagery: Despair hurrying from couch to 

o couch to mock the wretches with his 
attendance ; Death shaking his dart over them, 
but, in spite of supplications, delaying to 
strike. What says Dante? " There was such 
a moan there as there would be if all the sick 1 

6 who, between July and September, are in the 
hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan 
swamps, and of Sardinia, were in one pit 
together ; and such a stench was issuing forth 
as is wont to issue from decayed limbs." 

o We will not take upon ourselves the 
invidious office of settling precedency between 
two such writers. Each in his own depart- 
ment is incomparable ; and each, we may 

4. Lazar house. Lazar is derived from Lazarus, meaning leper, and 
is used here for hospital. 

6. Malebolge. The eighth circle of Hell in Dante's " Inferno." It 
was a deep gulf surrounded by ten pits, the abode of the forgers and liars. 

16. Valdichiana. A region of Tuscany formerly swampy and un- 
healthy. 



MILTON. 41 

remark, has wisely, or fortunately, taken a 
subject adapted to exhibit his peculiar talent 
to the greatest advantage. The " Divine 
Comedy" is a personal narrative. Dante is 
the eye-witness and ear-witness of that which 5 
he relates. He is the very man who has heard 
the tormented spirits crying out for the second 
death ; who has read the dusky characters on 
the portal within which there is no hope ; who 
has hidden his face from the terrors of the 10 
Gorgon ; who has fled from the hooks and the 
seething pitch of Barbariccia and Draghign- 
azzo. His own hands have grasped the 
shaggy sides of Lucifer. His own feet have 
climbed the mountain of expiation. His own* 5 
brow has been marked by the purifying angel. 
The reader would throw aside such a tale in 
incredulous disgust, unless it were told with 
the strongest air of veracity; with a sobriety 
even in its horrors; with the greatest precision 20 

7. second death. The death of the soul. "Inferno," Book I., line 
117. 

8. Over the portal of Hell were inscribed the words, " Lasciate ogni 
Sperauza, voi ch'entrate," "All hope abandon, ye who enter here." 
" Inferno," Book III., line 9. 

11. Gorgon. Medusa, one of the three sisters with the snaky locks who 
turned to stone all who looked upon her. 

13. Barbariccia and Draghignazzo. Names of fiends in the 
" Inferno." 

14. Lucifer. A name given to Satan. 

15. Mountain of expiation. Purgatory 



42 MILTON. 

and multiplicity in its details. The narrative 
of Milton in this respect differs from that of 
Dante, as the adventures of Amadis differ 
from those of Gulliver. The author of 

5 " Amadis" would have made his book ridicu- 
lous if he had introduced those minute 
particulars which give such a charm to the 
work of Swift; the nautical observations, the 
affected delicacy about names, the official 

10 documents transcribed at full length, and all 
the unmeaning gossip and scandal of the 
court, springing out of nothing, and tending 
to nothing. We are not shocked at being 
told that a man who lived, nobody knows 

15 when, saw many very strange sights, and we 
can easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of 
the romance. But when Lemuel Gulliver, 
surgeon, resident at Rotherhithe, tells us of 
pygmies and giants, flying islands, and phil- 

2oosophizing horses, nothing but such circum- 
stantial touches could produce for a single 
moment a deception on the imagination. 

Of all the poets who have introduced into 
their works the agency of supernatural beings, 

3. Amadis. Hero of the legendary romance of chivalry, " Amadis of 
Gaul," written by a Portuguese in the fourteenth century. 

4. Gulliver. Hero of " Gulliver's Travels," a romance by Dean 
Swift (1667-1745) and a bitter satire on English social and political life. 



MILTON. 43 

Milton has succeeded best. Here Dante 
decidedly yields to him ; and as this is a point 
on which many rash and ill-considered judg- 
ments have been pronounced, we feel inclined 
to dwell on it a little longer. The most fatal 5 
error which a poet can possibly commit in the 
management of his machinery is that of 
attempting to philosophize too much. Milton 
has often been censured for ascribing to spirits 
many functions of which spirits must beio 
incapable. But these objections, though 
sanctioned by eminent names, originate, we 
venture to say, in profound ignorance of the 
art of poetry. 

What is spirit? What are our own minds, 15 
the portion of spirit with which we are best 
acquainted? We observe certain phenomena. 
We cannot explain them into material causes. 
We therefore infer that there exists something 
which is not material. But of this something 20 
we have no idea. We can define it only by 
negatives. We can reason about it only by 
symbols. We use the word, but w r e have no 
image of the thing; and the business of 
poetry is with images, and not with words. 25 
The poet uses words indeed ; but they are 
merely the instruments of his art, not its 



44 MILTON. 

objects. They are the materials which he is 
to dispose in such a manner as to present a 
picture to the mental eye. And if they are 
not so disposed, they are no more entitled to 

5 be called poetry than a bale of canvas and a 
box of colors to be called a painting. 

Logicians may reason about abstractions. 
But the great mass of men must have images. 
The strong tendency of the multitude in all 

10 ages and nations to idolatry can be explained 
on no other principle. The first inhabitants 
of Greece, there is reason to believe, wor- 
shipped one invisible Deity. But the necessity 
of having something more definite to adore 

15 produced, in a few centuries, the innumerable 
crowd of gods and goddesses. In like manner 
the ancient Persians thought it impious to 
exhibit the Creator under a human form. Yet 
even these transferred to the sun the worship 

20 which, in speculation, they considered due only 
to the Supreme Mind. The history of the Jews 
is the record of a continued struggle between 
pure Theism, supported by the most terrible 
sanctions, and the strangely fascinating desire 

13. This statement is a very doubtful one. 

17. Zoroaster, the great Persian prophet, taught that there were two 
creative spirits, one good, the other evil, but that the good would 
ultimately prevail. 



MILTON. 45 

of having some visible and tangible object of 
adoration. Perhaps none of the secondary 
causes which Gibbon has assigned for the 
rapidity with which Christianity spread over the 
world, while Judaism scarcely ever acquired a 5 
proselyte, operated more powerfully than this 
feeling. God, the uncreated, the incompre- 
hensible, the invisible, attracted few wor- 
shippers. A philosopher might admire so 
noble a conception; but the crowd turned 10 
away in disgust from words which presented 
no image to their minds. It was before Deity, 
embodied in a human form, walking among 
men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on 
their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slum- 15 
bering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, 
that the prejudices of the Synagogue, and the 
doubts of the Academy, and the pride of the 
Portico, and the fasces of the Lictor, and 
the swords of the thirty legions, were humbled 20 

3. Edward Gibbon, (1737-1794.) An eminent English historian, 
author of the" Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." 

17. Synagogue. The Jewish place of worship, but used here to denote 
the Jews as a race. 

18. Academy. A garden in Athens where Plato taught his disciples. 
Hence his philosophy received the name of Academic. 

19. Portico. A porch in Athens where Zeno, the founder of the Stoic 
school of philosophy, used to teach. 

19. Lictor. A Roman officer who attended the magistrates and carried 
as a badge of authority a bundle of rods called fasces. The expression is 
here used as a symbol of the Roman Empire. 



46 MILTON. 

in the dust. Soon after Christianity had 
achieved its triumph, the principle which had 
assisted it began to corrupt it. It became a 
new paganism. Patron saints assumed the 
offices of household gods. St. George took 
the place of Mars. St. Elmo consoled the 
mariner for the loss of Castor and Pollux. 
The Virgin Mother and Cecilia succeeded to 
Venus and the Muses. The fascination of sex 

10 and loveliness was again joined to that of celes- 
tial dignity ; and the homage of chivalry was 
blended with that of religion. Reformers have 
often made a stand against these feelings ; but 
never with more than apparent and partial 

is success. The men who demolished the images 
in cathedrals have not always been able to 
demolish those which were enshrined in their 
minds. It would not be difficult to show that 
in politics the same rule holds good. Doc- 

5. St. George. The patron saint of England because of the assistance 
he rendered their armies in the first Crusade. 

6. Mars. The god of war. 

St Elmo. The electric light often seen about the masts of ships in 
a storm was called St. Elmo's fire by the Italian sailors. The Romans 
attributed this light to the gods, Castor and Pollux. 

8. Cecilia, (A.D. 230.) The patroness of church music and said to 
have invented the organ. 

9. Muses. The nine goddesses in Greek mythology who presided 
over the fine arts. 

15. The "image breakers" or iconoclasts of the eighth century 
sought to abolish the use of images in church worship. 



MILTON. 47 

trines, we are afraid, must generally be 
embodied before they can excite a strong 
public feeling. The multitude is more easily 
interested for the most unmeaning badge, or 
the most insignificant name, than for the most 5 
important principle. 

From these considerations, we infer that no 
poet who should effect that metaphysical 
accuracy for the want of which Milton has 
been blamed, would escape a disgraceful 10 
failure. Still, however, there was another 
extreme which, though far less dangerous, was 
also to be avoided. The imaginations of men 
are in a great measure under the control of 
their opinions. The most exquisite art of 15 
poetical coloring can produce no illusion when 
it is employed to represent that which is at 
once perceived to be incongruous and absurd. 
Milton wrote in an age of philosophers and 
theologians. It was necessary, therefore, for 2 o 
him to abstain from giving such a shock to 
their understandings as might break the charm 
which it was his object to throw over their 
imaginations. This is the real explanation 
of the indistinctness and inconsistency with 25 
which he has often been reproached. Dr. 
Johnson acknowledges that it was absolutely 



48 MILTON. 

necessary that the spirits should be clothed 
with material forms. " But," says he, " the 
poet should have secured the consistency of 
his system by keeping immateriality out of 
s sight, and seducing the reader to drop it 
from his thoughts." This is easily said ; but 
what if Milton could not seduce his readers to 
drop immateriality from their thoughts? 
What if the contrary opinion had taken so 
10 full a possession of the minds of men as to 
leave no room even for the half belief which 
poetry requires? Such we suspect to have 
been the case. It was impossible for the poet 
to adopt altogether the material or the imma- 
terial system. He therefore took his stand 
on the debatable ground. He left the whole 
in ambiguity. He has doubtless, by so doing, 
laid himself open to the charge of inconsis- 
tency. But, though philosophically in the 
20 wrong, we cannot but believe that he was 
poetically in the right. This task, which 
almost any other writer would have found 
impracticable v was easy to him. The peculiar 
art which he possessed of communicating his 
25 meaning circuitously through a long succes- 
sion of associated ideas, and of intimating 
more than he expressed, enabled him to 



MILTON. 49 

disguise those incongruities which he could 
not avoid. 

Poetry which relates to the beings of another 
world ought to be at once mysterious and 
picturesque. That of Milton is so. That of s 
Dante is picturesque, indeed, beyond any that 
ever was written. Its effect approaches to 
that produced by the pencil or the chisel. 
But it is picturesque to the exclusion of all 
mystery. This is a fault on the right side, a 10 
fault inseparable from the plan of Dante's 
poem, which, as we have already observed, 
rendered the utmost accuracy of description 
necessary. Still it is a fault. The super- 
natural agents excite an interest; but it is not 15 
the interest which is proper to supernatural 
agents. We feel that we could talk to the 
ghosts and demons, without any emotion of 
unearthly awe. We could, like Don Juan, ask 
them to supper, and eat heartily in their 20 
company. Dante's angels are good men with 
wings. His devils are spiteful, ugly execu- 
tioners. His dead men are merely living men 
in strange situations. The scene which passes 
between the poet and Farinata is justly 25 

19. Don Juan. A legendary nobleman of Spain who sold himself to the 
Devil. In Mozart's opera, " Don Giovanni," he invites a statue to supper 
with him and the statue, much to his amazement, comes. 



5<D MILTON. 

celebrated. Still, Farinata in the burning 
tomb is exactly what Farinata would have 
been at an auto da fe. Nothing can be more 
touching than the first interview of Dante and 

-5 Beatrice. Yet what is it, but a lovely woman 
chiding, with sweet, austere composure, the 
lover for whose affection she is grateful, but 
whose vices she reprobates? The feelings 
which give the passage its charm would suit 

10 the streets of Florence as well as the summit 
of the Mount of Purgatory. 

The spirits of Milton are unlike those of 
almost all other writers. His fiends, in par- 
ticular, are wonderful creations. They are 

15 not metephysical abstractions. They are not 
wicked men. They are not ugly beasts. 
They have no horns, no tails, none of the 
fee-faw-fum of Tasso and Klopstock. They 
have just enough in common with human 

i. Farinata. A Florentine who was condemned to Hell in the 
" Inferno," canto X., because he was an Epicurean. 

3. auto da fe. A Spanish name meaning " act of faith," given to the 
ceremony of executing heretics by the Inquisition. 

Beatrice. The woman whom Dante loved from the time he first 
met her when he was but nine years old. She died at twenty-four and 
thenceforth became for him an embodiment of divine philosophy and love. 
In the " Divine Comedy," she meets him in Purgatory and is his guide 
through Paradise. 

18. Tasso, (1544-1595.) An Italian poet. His great epic, "Jerusalem 
Delivered," describes a council of Devils similar to that in "Paradise 
Lost," Book I., line 300. 

18. Klopstock, (1724-1803.) A German poet who wrote an epic called 
the " Messiah," and other poems on Biblical subjects. 



MILTON. 5 I 

nature to be intelligible to human beings. 
Their characters are, like their forms, marked 
by a certain dim resemblance to those of men, 
but exaggerated to gigantic dimensions, and 
veiled in mysterious gloom. 5 

Perhaps the gods and demons of ^Eschylus 
may best bear a comparison with the angels 
and devils of Milton. The style of the Athe- 
nian had, as we have remarked, something of 
the Oriental character; and the same pecu-10 
liarity may be traced in his mythology. It 
has nothing of the amenity and elegance 
which we generally find in the superstitions of 
Greece. All is rugged, barbaric, and co- 
lossal. The legends of ^Eschylus seem to 15 
harmonize less with the fragrant groves and 
graceful porticos in which his countrymen paid 
their vows to the God of Light and Goddess 
of Desire, than with those huge and grotesque 
labyrinths of eternal granite in which Egypt 20 
enshrined her mystic Osiris, or in which Hin- 
dostan still bows down to her seven-headed 
idols. His favorite gods are those of the elder 

6. demon or daemon. Here the Greek word for spirit. 

18. God of Light. Apollo. 

19. Goddess of Desire. Venus. 

21. Os : ris. The ruler of the underworld and judge of the dead. 



52 MILTON. 

generation, the sons of heaven and earth, 
compared with whom Jupiter himself was a 
stripling and an upstart, — the gigantic Titans, 
and the inexorable Furies. Foremost among 

5 his creations of this class stands Prometheus, 
half fiend, half redeemer, the friend of man, 
the sullen and implacable enemy of heaven. 
Prometheus bears undoubtedly a considerable 
resemblance to the Satan of Milton. In both 

10 we find the same impatience of control, the 
same ferocity, the same unconquerable pride. 
In both characters, also, are mingled, though 
in very different proportions, some kind and 
generous feelings. Prometheus, however, is 

is hardly superhuman enough. He talks too 
much of his chains and his uneasy posture; 
he is rather too much depressed and agitated. 
His resolution seems to depend on the knowl- 
edge which he possesses that he holds the fate 

20 of his torturer in his hands, and that the hour 
of his release will surely come. But Satan is 
a creature of another sphere. The might of 

3. Titans. A race of demigods whose authority Jupiter usurped and 
who made war upon him in consequence. 

4. Furies. Divinities in the form of women who drive guilty souls to 
Hades. 

5. Prometheus. A rebellious divinity who, in spite of the decree of 
Zeus, stole fire from Heaven in a burning ember and brought it to earth. 
As a punishment he was chained to one of the Caucasus mountains where 
an eagle daily fed upon his liver. 



MILTON. 5 3 

his intellectual nature is victorious over the 
extremity of pain. Amidst agonies which 
cannot be conceived without horror, he delib- 
erates, resolves, and even exults. Against 
the sword of Michael, against the thunder of* 
Jehovah, against the flaming lake, and the 
marl burning with solid fire, against the 
prospect of an eternity of unintermitted mis- 
ery, his spirit bears up unbroken, resting on 
its own innate energies, requiring no support 10 
from anything external, nor even from hope 
itself. 

To return for a moment to the parallel 
which we have been attempting to draw 
between Milton and Dante, we would add is 
that the poetry of these great men has in a 
considerable degree taken its character from 
their moral qualities. They are not egotists. 
They rarely obtrude their idiosyncrasies on 
their readers. They have nothing in common 20 
with those modern beggars for fame, who 
extort a pittance from the compassion of the 
inexperienced by exposing the nakedness and 
sores of their minds. Yet it would be difficult 
to name two writers whose works have been 25 



ax. beggars for fame. Probably referring to Lord Byron, who, 
Macaulay said, owed a large part of his influence to his " gloomy 
egotism." 



54 MILTON. 

more completely, though undesignedly, colored 
by their personal feelings. 

The character of Milton was peculiarly 
distinguished by loftiness of spirit; that of 

5 Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line 
of the ''Divine Comedy" we discern the 
asperity which is produced by pride struggling 
with misery. There is perhaps no work in 
the world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. 

10 The melancholy of Dante was no fantastic 
caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance 
of time can be judged, the effect of external 
circumstances. It was from within. Neither 
love nor glory, neither the conflicts of earth 

15 nor the hope of heaven, could dispel it. It 
turned every consolation and every pleasure 
into its own nature. It resembled that noxious 
Sardinian soil of which the intense bitterness 
is said to have been perceptible even in its 

20 honey. His mind was, in the noble language 
of the Hebrew poet, " a land of darkness, as 
darkness itself, and where the light was as dark- 
ness." The gloom of his character discolors 
all the passions of men, and all the face of 

25 nature, and tinges with its own livid hue the 

18. Several Latin poets refer to this peculiarity in both Sardinia and 
Corsica. They ascribed the bittterness of the honey, however, to certain 
flowers on which the bees fed. 



MILTON. 5 5 

flowers of Paradise and the glories of the 
eternal throne. All the portraits of him are 
singularly characteristic. No person can look 
on the features, noble even to ruggedness, the 
dark furrows of the cheek, the haggard and 5 
woeful stare of the eye, the sullen and con- 
temptuous curve of the lip, and doubt that they 
belong to a man too proud and too sensitive 
to be happy. 

Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and aio 
lover; and, like Dante, he had been unfor- 
tunate in ambition and in love. He had 
survived his health and his sight, the comforts 
of his home, and the prosperity of his party. 
Of the great men by whom he had beenis 
distinguished at his entrance into life, some 
had been taken away from the evil to come ; 
some had carried into foreign climates their 
unconquerable hatred of oppression ; some 
were pining in dungeons; and some had 20 
poured forth their blood on scaffolds. Venal 
and licentious scribblers, with just sufficient 
talent to clothe the thoughts of a pander in 
the style of a bell-man, were now the favorite 
writers of the sovereign and of the public. It 25 
was a loathsome herd, which could be com- 

25. Sovereign. Charles II. 



56 MILTON. 

pared to nothing so fitly as to the rabble of 
" Comus," grotesque monsters, half bestial, 
half human, dropping with wine, bloated with 
gluttony, and reeling in obscene dances. 

5 Amidst these that fair Muse was placed, like 
the chaste lady of the masque, lofty, spotless, 
and serene, to be chattered at, and pointed at, 
and grinned at, by the whole rout of satyrs 
and goblins. If ever despondency and asperity 

10 could be excused in any man, they might have 
been excused in Milton. But the strength of 
his mind overcame every calamity. Neither 
blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor 
domestic afflictions, nor political disappoint- 

i5ments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, 
had power to disturb his sedate and majes- 
tic patience. His spirits do not seem to have 
been high, but they were singularly equable. 
His temper was serious, perhaps stern; but it 

20 was a temper which no sufferings could render 
sullen or fretful. Such as it was when, on the 
eve of great events, he returned from his 
travels, in the prime of health and manly 
beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and 

25 glowing with patriotic hopes ; such it con- 
tinued to be when, after having experienced 
every calamity which is incident to our nature, 



MILTON. 57 

old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he retired 
to his hovel to die. 

Hence it was that, though he wrote " Para- 
dise Lost " at a time of life when images of 
beauty and tenderness are in general beginning 5 
to fade, even from those minds in which they 
have not been effaced by anxiety and disap- 
pointment, he adorned it with all that is most 
lovely and delightful in the physical and in the 
moral world. Neither Theocritus nor Ariostoio 
had a finer or more healthful sense of the 
pleasantness of external objects, or loved better 
to luxuriate amidst sunbeams and flowers, the 
songs of nightingales, the juice of summer 
fruits, and the coolness of shady fountains*. His 1 ^ 
conception of love unites all the voluptuous- 
ness of the Oriental harem, and all the gal- 
lantry of the chivalric tournament, with all the 
pure and quiet affection of an English fireside. 
His poetry reminds us of the miracles of Alpine 20 
scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairy- 
land, are embosomed in its most rugged and 
gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles 
bloom unchilled on the verge of the avalanche. 

10. Theocritus A Greek poet of the third century B.C., whose 
pastorals are still the most beautiful poems of their kind in any language. 

'o. Ariosto, (1474-1533.) An Italian poet of wonderful grace and charm 
of style. " Orlando Furioso,'' a story of chivalry, is his chief work. 



58 MILTON. 

Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of 
Milton may be found in all his works ; but it 
is most strongly displayed in the Sonnets. 
Those remarkable poems have been under- 

5 valued by critics who have not understood 
their nature. They have no epigrammatic 
point. There is none of the ingenuity of 
Filicaja in the thought, none of the hard and 
brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the style. 

10 They are simple but majestic records of the 
feelings of the poet; as little tricked out for 
the public eye as his diary would have been. 
A victory, an expected attack upon the city, 
a momentary fit of depression or exultation, a 

is jest thrown out against one of his books, a 
dream which for a short time restored to him 
that beautiful face over which the grave had 
closed forever, led him to musings which, 
without effort, shaped themselves into verse. 

20 The unity of sentiment and severity of style 
which characterize these little pieces remind 
us of the Greek Anthology, or perhaps still 
more of the Collects of the English Liturgy. 

8. Filicaja, (1642-1707.) An Italian lyric poet and jurist. His sonnet to 
Italy was translated by Byron and inserted in the fourth canto of " Childe 
Harold" in the lines beginning, " Italia, O Italia " 

22. Anthology. From two Greek words meaning flower gathering. 
A collection of the " flowers" of Greek poetry dating from 100 B.C., and 
continued to the fourteenth century. 

23 Collect. A short prayer and lesson adapted to a particular day or 



MILTON. 59 

The noble poem, on the Massacres of Pied- 
mont is strictly a collect in verse. 

The Sonnets are more or less striking, 
according as the occasions which gave birth 
to them are more or less interesting. But 5 
they are, almost without exception, dignified 
by a sobriety and greatness of mind to which 
we know not where to look for a parallel. It 
would, indeed, be scarcely safe to draw any 
decided inferences as to the character of a w 
writer from passages directly egotistical. But 
the qualities which we have ascribed to Milton, 
though perhaps most strongly marked in 
those parts of his works which treat of his 
personal feelings, are distinguishable in every 15 
page, and impart to all his writings, prose and 
poetry, English, Latin, and Italian, a strong 
family likeness. 

His public conduct was such as was to be 
expected from a man of a spirit so high and 20 
of an intellect so powerful. He lived at one 
of the most memorable eras in the history of 
mankind ; at the very crisis of the great 
conflict between Oromasdes and Arimanes, 
liberty and despotism, reason and prejudice. 25 

24. Oromasdes and Arimanes. The former in the old Persian religion 
was regarded as the source of all good, the latter as the source of evil. 
They are also known as Ormuzd and Ahriman. 



60 MILTON. 

That great battle was fought for no single 
generation, for no single land. The destinies 
of the human race were staked on the same 
cast with the freedom of the English people. 

s Then were first proclaimed those mighty 
principles which have since worked their way 
into the depths of the American forests, which 
have roused Greece from the slavery and 
degradation of two thousand years, and which, 

10 from one end of Europe to the other, have 
kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of 
the oppressed, and loosed the knees of the 
oppressors with an unwonted fear. 

Of those principles, then struggling for 

is their infant existence, Milton was the most 
devoted and eloquent literary champion. We 
need not say how much we admire his public 
conduct. But we cannot disguise from our- 
selves that a large portion of his countrymen 

20 still think it unjustifiable. The civil war, 
indeed, has been more discussed, and is less 
understood, than any event in English history. 
The friends of liberty labored under the 
disadvantage of which the lion in the fable 

24 A fable of JEsop. A lion and a man traveling together came upon 
the statue of a man strangling a lion. " See how strong we are," said the 
man, " and how easily we can prevail over you." " Yes," answered the 
lion, " but had this statue been made by one of us, the man would have 
been under the lion's paw." 



MILTON. 6 1 

complained so bitterly. Though they were 
the conquerors, their enemies were the 
painters. As a body, the Roundheads had 
done their utmost to decry and ruin literature ; 
and literature was even with them, as, in the 5 
long run, it always is with its enemies. The 
best book on their side of the question is the 
charming narrative of Mrs. Hutchinson. May's 
"History of the Parliament" is good; but it 
breaks off at the most interesting crisis of the 10 
struggle. The performance of Ludlow is 
foolish and violent ; and most of the later 
writers who have espoused the same cause, 
Oldmixon, for instance, and Catherine 
Macaulay, have, to say the least, been more 15 
distinguished by zeal than either by candor or 
by skill. On the other side are the most 
authoritative and the most popular historical * 
works in our language, — that of Clarendon 

3. Roundhead. A name given to the Puritans, because, unlike the 
Royalists, they cut their hair short. 

8. Mrs. Hutchinson, (1620-1659.) She wrote a memoir of her hus- 
band, who was a soldier in the Parliamentary army. 

8. Thomas May, (1504-1680.) Secretary to Parliament during the 
Civil War. 

n. Ludlow, (1620-1693.) Wrote the memoirs of Cromwell to whom 
he was opposed. 

14. Oldmixon. A Whig historian. 

14. Catherine Macaulay, (1733-1791.) Author of a " History of 
England " from the reign of James I. 

19. Earl of Clarendon, (1608-1674) A Royalist who became Prime 
Minister under Charles II. 



62 MILTON. 

and that of Hume. The former is not only 
ably written and full of valuable information, 
but has also an air of dignity and sincerity 
which makes even the prejudices and errors 

5 with which it abounds respectable. Hume, 
from whose fascinating narrative the great 
mass of the reading public are still contented 
to take their opinions, hated religion so much 
that he hated liberty for having been allied 

10 with religion, and has pleaded the cause of 
tyranny with the dexterity of an advocate 
while affecting the impartiality of a judge. 

The public conduct of Milton must be 
approved or condemned, according as the 

i* resistance of the people to Charles I. shall 
appear to be justifiable or criminal. We shall 
therefore make no apology for dedicating a 
few pages to that interesting and most import- 
ant question. We shall not argue it on gen- 

soeral grounds. We shall not recur to those 
primary principles from which the claim of 
any government to the obedience of its sub- 
jects is to be deduced. We are entitled to 
that vantage ground ; but we will relinquish it. 

25 We are, on this point, so confident of superi- 
ority, that we are not unwilling to imitate the 

i. David Hume, (1711-1776.) One of the greatest philosophers and 
historians of England. 



MILTON. 63 

ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights 
who vowed to joust without helmet or shield 
against all enemies, and to give their antago- 
nists the advantage of sun and wind. We will 
take the naked constitutional question. We 5 
confidently affirm, that every reason which can 
be urged in favor of the Revolution of 1688 
may be urged with at least equal force in favor 
of what is called the Great Rebellion. 

In one respect only, we think, can the 10 
warmest admirers of Charles venture to say 
that he was a better sovereign than his son. 
He was not, in name and profession, a Papist; 
we say in name and profession, because both 
Charles himself and his creature Laud, whiles 
they abjured the innocent badges of Popery, 
retained all its worst vices, — a complete sub- 
jection of reason to authority, a weak prefer- 
ence of form to substance, a childish passion 
for mummeries, an idolatrous veneration for 20 
the priestly character, and, above all, a merci- 
less intolerance. This, however, we waive. 
We will concede that Charles was a good 

7. Revolution of 1688. That in which the Stuarts were driven from 
the English throne, which passed to William of Orange and the House of 
Hanover. 

15. William Laud, (1573-1645.) He was Archbishop of Canterbury 
and persecuted the Protestants so bitterly that he was impeached by 
Parliament and beheaded on Tower Hill. 



64 MILTON. 

Protestant ; but we will say that his Protestant- 
ism does not make the slightest distinction 
between his case and that of James. 

The principles of the Revolution have often 

5 been grossly misrepresented, and never more 
than in the course of the present year. There 
is a certain class of men who, while they pro- 
fess to hold in reverence the great names and 
actions of former times, never look at them 

10 for any other purpose than in order to find in 
them some excuse for existing abuses. In 
every venerable precedent they pass by what 
is essential, and take only what is accidental : 
they keep out of sight what is beneficial, and 

15 hold up to public imitation all that is defec- 
tive. If, in any part of any great example, 
there be anything unsound, these flesh flies 
detect it with an unerring instinct, and dart 
upon it with a ravenous delight. If some 

20 good end had been attained in spite of them, 
they feel, with their prototype, that their 

" Labor must be to pervert that end, 
And out of good still to find means of evil." 

To the blessings which England had derived 

25 from the Revolution these people are utterly 

insensible. The expulsion of a tyrant, the 

23. " Paradise Lost," Book I., lines 164, 165. 



MILTON. 6 5 

solemn recognition of popular rights, — liberty, 
security, toleration, — all go for nothing with 
them. One sect there was, which, from unfor- 
tunate temporary causes, it was thought neces- 
sary to keep under close restraint. One part 5 
of the empire there was, so unhappily circum- 
stanced that at that time its misery was neces- 
sary to our happiness, and its slavery to our 
freedom. These are the parts of the Revolu- 
tion which the politicians of whom we speak io 
love to contemplate, and which seem to them 
not indeed to vindicate, but in some, degree to 
palliate, the good which it has produced. 
Talk to them of Naples, of Spain, or of South 
America. They stand forth zealots for the 15 
doctrine of Divine Right, which has now come 
back to us, like a thief from transportation, 
under the alias of Legitimacy. But mention 
the miseries of Ireland. Then William is a 
hero. Then Somers and Shrewsbury are great 20 
men. Then the Revolution is a glorious era ! 

3. sect. The Catholics 

6. empire. Ireland. 

16. Divine Right. The Royalists under the Stuarts held that kings 
received their authority from God and that to oppose them was therefore 
tc oppose God. At the time of this essay there was an attempt to pass a 
bill through Parliament giving Irish Catholics the right to vote and hold 
office. This was bitterly opposed by the Tory party. 

19. William III. Prince of Orange. 

20. Somers and Shrewsbury. Ministers of William. 



66 MILTON. 

The very same persons who, in this country, 
never omit an opportunity of reviving every 
wretched Jacobite slander respecting the Whigs 
of that period, have no sooner crossed St. 

5 George's Channel than they begin to fill their 
bumpers to the glorious and immortal mem- 
ory. They may truly boast that they look 
not at men but at measures. So that evil be 
done, they care not who does it ; the arbitrary 

10 Charles or the liberal William, Ferdinand 
the Catholic or Frederick the Protestant. 
On such. occasions their deadliest opponents 
may reckon upon their candid construction. 
The bold assertions of these people have of 

15 late impressed a large portion of the public 
with an opinion that James II. was expelled 
simply because he was a Catholic, and that 
the Revolution was essentially a Protestant 
revolution. 

20 But this certainly was not the case, nor can 
any person who has acquired more knowledge 
of the history of those times than is to be 

3. Jacobite. A term applied to the adherents of the Stuarts. 
5. St. George's Channel. Separating England and Ireland. 

10. Ferdinand V. King of Spain in the time of Columbus. He 
instituted the Inquisition. 

11. Frederick V., (1596-1632.) One of the German Princes of the 
Palatinate and a leader of the Protestant party. 



MILTON. 6/ 

found in Goldsmith's " Abridgement " believe 
that, if James had held his own religious 
opinions without wishing to make proselytes, 
or if, wishing even to make proselytes, he had 
contented himself with exerting only his con- 5 
stitutional influence for that purpose, the 
Prince of Orange would ever have been invited 
over. Our ancestors, we suppose, knew their 
own meaning; and, if we may believe them, 
their hostility was primarily not to Popery, 10 
but to tyranny. They did not drive out a 
tyrant because he was a Catholic ; but they 
excluded Catholics from the Crown because 
they thought them likely to be tyrants. The 
ground on which they, in their famous resolu-15 
tion, declared the throne vacant, was this, 
" that James had broken the fundamental laws 
of the kingdom." Every man, therefore, who 
approves of the Revolution of 1688 must hold 
that the breach of fundamental laws on the 20 
part of the sovereign justifies resistance. The 
question, then, is this : Had Charles I. broken 
the fundamental laws of England ? 

No person can answer in the negative unless 
he refuses credit, not merely to all accusations 25 

1. Oliver Goldsmith, (1728-1774.) He was forced by his poverty to 
do much hack work and this abridgement of his " History of England " is 
a sample of it. 



68 MILTON. 

brought against Charles by his opponents, but 
to the narratives of the warmest Royalists, and 
to the confessions of the king himself. If 
there be any truth in any historian of any 

5 party who has related the events of that reign, 
the conduct of Charles, from his accession to 
the meeting of the Long Parliament, had been 
a continued course of oppression and treachery. 
Let those who applaud the Revolution and 

10 condemn the Rebellion mention one act of 
James II. to which a parallel is not to be 
found in the history of his father. Let them 
lay their fingers on a single article in the 
Declaration of Right, presented by the two 

15 Houses to William and Mary, which Charles 
is not acknowledged to have violated. He 
had, according to the testimony of his own 
friends, usurped the functions of the legis- 
lature, raised taxes without the consent of 

20 Parliament, and quartered troops on the peo- 
ple in the most illegal and vexatious manner. 
Not a single session of Parliament had passed 
without some unconstitutional attack on the 

7. The Long Parliament. So called because it continued, with but 
a single intermission, under Cromwell, from 1640 to the Restoration in 
1660. 

14. Declaration of Right. A bill containing a statement of the rights 
and privileges of Parliament and of the people, which had been violated 
by the Stuarts. It was only after signing this paper that William and 
Mary were acknowledged rulers of England. 



MILTON. 69 

freedom of debate. The right of petition was 
grossly violated. Arbitrary judgments, exor- 
bitant fines, and unwarranted imprisonments 
were grievances of daily occurrence. If these 
things do not justify resistance, the Revolution 5 
was treason ; if they do, the great Rebellion 
was laudable. 

But, it is said, why not adopt milder 
measures? Why, after the king had consented 
to do so many reforms and renounced so many 10 
oppressive prerogatives, did the Parliament 
continue to rise in their demands at the risk 
of provoking a civil war? The ship money 
had been given up, the Star Chamber had 
been abolished, provision had been made for 15 
the frequent convocation and secure delibera- 
tion of Parliaments. Why not pursue an end 
confessedly good by peaceable and regular 
means? We recur again to the analogy of the 
Revolution. Why was James driven from the 20 
throne? Why was he not retained upon con- 
ditions? He, too, had offered to call a free 
Parliament, and to submit to its decision all the 
matters in dispute. Yet we are in the habit of 

13. ship money. A tax laid upon sea-ports in time of war to repel 
invasions. Charles I. tried to collect this tax from inland towns also. 

14. Star Chamber. A court of justice instituted by the king and so 
named because it sat in a chamber decorated with gilt stars. 



JO MILTON. 

praising our forefathers, who preferred a revo- 
lution, a disputed succession, a dynasty of 
strangers, twenty years of foreign and intestine 
war, a standing army, and a national debt, to 

5 the rule, however restricted, of a tried and 
proved tyrant. The Long Parliament acted 
on the same principle, and is entitled to the 
same praise. They could not trust the king. 
He had, no doubt, passed salutary laws ; but 

10 what assurance was there that he would not 
break them? He had renounced oppressive 
prerogatives ; but where was the security that 
he would not resume them? The nation had 
to deal with a man whom no tie could bind ; 

15 a man who made and broke promises with 

equal facility; a man whose honor had been 

a hundred times pawned, and never redeemed. 

Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands 

on still stronger ground than the Convention 

20 of 1 688. No action of James can be com- 
pared to the conduct of Charles with respect 
to the Petition of Right. The Lords and 
Commons present him with a bill in which the 
constitutional limits of his power are marked 

19. The Convention declaring the throne vacant. It took the place of 
Parliament which could not assemble in the absence of a king. 

22. Petition of Right. A bill passed in the reign of Charles I. limiting 
the powers of the sovereign. Charles signed it but afterward broke all its 
provisions. 



MILTON. 7 I 

out. He hesitates ; he evades ; at last he 
bargains to give his assent for five subsidies. 
The bill receives his solemn assent ; the sub- 
sidies are voted ; but no sooner is the tyrant 
relieved than he returns at once to all the 5 
arbitrary measures which he had bound him- 
self to abandon, and violates all the clauses of 
the very act which he had been paid to pass. 
For more than ten years the people had 
seen the rights which were theirs by a double w 
claim, — by immemorial inheritance and by 
recent purchase, — infringed by the perfidious 
king who had recognized them. At length 
circumstances compelled Charles to summon 
another Parliament. Another chance was 15 
given to our fathers : were they to throw it 
away as they had thrown away the former? 
Were they again to be cozened by le Rot le 
vent? Were they again to advance their 
money on pledges which had been forfeited 20 
over and over again? Were they to lay a 
second Petition of Right at the foot of the 
throne, to grant another lavish aid in exchange 
for another unmeaning ceremony, and then to 
take their departure, till, after ten years more 25 
of fraud and oppression, their prince should 

18. le Roi le vent. " The king wishes it." The formula which the 
sovereign uses in giving his assent to bills of Parliament. 



72 MILTON. 

again require a supply, and again reward it 
with a perjury? They were compelled to 
choose whether they would trust a tyrant or 
conquer him. We think that they chose 

s wisely and nobly. 

The advocates of Charles, like the advocates 
of other malefactors against whom overwhelm- 
ing evidence is produced, generally decline all 
controversy about the facts, and content them- 

10 selves with calling testimony to character. 
He had so many private virtues ! And had 
James II. no private virtues? Was Oliver 
Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves 
being judges, destitute of private virtues? 

15 And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to 
Charles? A religious zeal, not more sincere 
than that of his son, and fully as weak and 
narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary 
household decencies which half the tombstones 

20 in England claim for those who lie beneath 
them. A good father ! A good husband ! 
Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of 
persecution, tyranny, and falsehood. 

We charge him with having broken his 

25 coronation oath ; and we are told that he kept 
his marriage vow ! We accuse him of having 
given up his people to the merciless inflictions 



MILTON. 73 

of the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of 
prelates ; and the defense is that he took his 
little son on his knee, and kissed him ! We 
censure him for having violated the articles of 
the Petition of Right, after having, for goods 
and valuable consideration, promised to 
observe them ; and we are informed that he 
was accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock 
in the morning ! It is to such considerations 
as these, together with his Vandyke dress, hisio 
handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he 
owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity 
with the present generation. 

For ourselves, we own that we do not 
understand the common phrase, " a good mams 
but a bad king." We can as easily conceive 
a good man and an unnatural father, or a good 
man and a treacherous friend. We cannot, in 
estimating the character of an individual, 
leave out of our consideration his conduct in 20 
the most important of all human relations ; 
and if in that relation we find him to have 
been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall take 
the liberty to call him a bad man, in spite of 

1. Archbishop Laud. 

10. Vandyke, (1599-1641.) More properly Van Dyck. A great 
portrait painter of Antwerp. He lived for many years in England and 
often painted Charles and the royal family. One of his most celebrated 
works is his picture of the three Stuart children. 



74 MILTON. 

all his temperance at table, and all his 
regularity at chapel. 

We cannot refrain from adding a few words 
respecting a topic on which the defenders of 

5 Charles are fond of dwelling. If, they say, 
he governed his people ill, he at least governed 
them after the example of his predecessors. 
If he violated their privileges, it was because 
those privileges had not been accurately 

10 defined. No act of oppression has ever been 
imputed to him which has not a parallel in 
the annals of the Tudors. This point Hume 
has labored, with an art which is as discred- 
itable in an historical work as it would be 

15 admirable in a forensic address. The answer 
is short, clear, and decisive. Charles had 
assented to the Petition of Right. He had 
renounced the oppressive powers said to have 
been exercised by his predecessors, and he 

20 had renounced them for money. He was not 
entitled to set up his antiquated claims against 
his own recent release. 

These arguments are so obvious that it may 
seem superfluous to dwell upon them ; but 

25 those who have observed how much the events 
of that time are misrepresented and misunder- 

12. Tudors. The ruling house in England from Henry VIII. to 
Queen Elizabeth. 



MILTON. 75 

stood, will not blame us for stating the case 
simply. It is a case of which the simplest 
statement is the strongest. 

The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, 
rarely choose to take issue on the great points 5 
of the question. They content themselves 
with exposing some of the crimes and follies 
to which public commotions necessarily give 
birth. They bewail the unmerited fate of 
Strafford. They execrate the lawless violence 10 
of the army. They laugh at the scriptural 
names of the preachers. Major generals 
fleecing their districts ; soldiers reveling on the 
spoils of a ruined peasantry ; upstarts, enriched 
by the public plunder, taking possession ofi5 
the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees of 
the old gentry; boys smashing the beautiful 
windows of cathedrals ; Quakers riding naked 
through the market place ; fifth-monarchy men 
shouting for King Jesus; agitators lecturing 20 
from the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag; — 
all these, they tell us, were the offspring of 
the Great Rebellion. 

10. Earl of Strafford, (1593-1641 ) A Whig who afterward joined the 
king's party. He was finally executed. 

18. Quakers. The sect was founded by George Fox in 1640. 

19. Fifth-monarchy men. A sect who believed that they were to 
prepare the way for the reign of Christ upon earth, which would follow as 
fifth in line, the Assyrian, Persian, Greek and Roman Monarchies. 

21. Agag. The king of the Amalekites who was slain by Samuel. 



76 MILTON. 

Be it so. We are not careful to answer in 
this matter. These charges, were they infin- 
itely more important, would not alter our 
opinion of an event which alone has made us 

5 to differ from the slaves who crouch beneath 
despotic scepters. Many evils, no doubt, were 
produced by the civil war. They were the 
price of our liberty. Has the acquisition been 
worth the sacrifice? It is the nature of the 

10 devil of tyranny to tear and rend the body 
which he leaves. Are the miseries of con- 
tinued possession less horrible than the 
struggles of the tremendous exorcism? 

If it were possible that a people brought up 

15 under an intolerant and arbitrary system could 
subvert that system without acts of cruelty and 
folly, half the objections to despotic power 
would be removed. We should, in that case, 
be compelled to acknowledge that it at least 

20 produces no pernicious effects on the intellect- 
ual and moral character of a nation. We 
deplore the outrages which accompany revolu- 
tions. But the more violent the outrages, the 
more assured we feel that a revolution was 

25 necessary. The violence of those outrages 
will always be proportioned to the ferocity and 
ignorance of the people, and the ferocity and 



MILTON. JJ 

ignorance of the people will be proportioned 
to the oppression and degradation under which 
they have been accustomed to live. Thus it 
was in our civil war. The heads of the Church 
and State reaped only what they had sown. 5 
The government had prohibited free discus- 
sion ; it had done its best to keep the people 
unacquainted with their duties and their rights. 
The retribution was just and natural. If our 
rulers suffered from popular ignorance, it was 10 
because they had themselves taken away the 
key of knowledge. If they were assailed with 
blind fury, it was because they had exacted an 
equally blind submission. 

It is the character of such revolutions that 15 
we always see the worst of them at first. Till 
men have been some time free, they know 
not how to use their freedom. The natives of 
wine countries are generally sober. In cli- 
mates where wine is a rarity intemperance 20 
abounds. A newly liberated people may be 
compared to a northern army encamped on 
the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that, when 
soldiers in such a situation first find themselves 
able to indulge without restraint in such a rare 25 
and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen 

1. Xeres. A Spanish town near Cadiz from which sherry wine takes 
its name. 



7$ MILTON. 

but intoxication. Soon, however, plenty 
teaches discretion, and, after wine has been for 
a few months their daily fare, they become more 
temperate than they had ever been in their 

5 own country. In the same manner, the final 
and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, 
moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects 
are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, 
scepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism 

10 on points the most mysterious. It is just at 
this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. 
They pull down the scaffolding from the half- 
finished edifice ; they point to the flying dust, 
the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the 

is frightful irregularity of the whole appearance ; 
and then ask in scorn where the promised 
splendor and comfort is to be found. If such 
miserable sophisms were to prevail there would 
never be a good house or a good government 

20 in the world. 

Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by 
some mysterious law of her nature, was con- 
demned to appear at certain seasons in the 
form of a foul and poisonous snake. Those 

25 who injured her during the period of her dis- 
guise were forever excluded from participation 

2i. In his " Orlando Furioso," Canto XLIIL, line 92. 



MILTON. 79 

in the blessings which she bestowed. But to 
those who, in spite of her loathsome aspect, 
pitied and protected her, she afterwards re- 
vealed herself in the beautiful and celestial 
form which was natural to her ; accompanied 5 
their steps, granted all their wishes, filled their 
houses with wealth, made them happy in love 
and victorious in war. Such a spirit is Liberty. 
At times she takes the form of a hateful rep- 
tile. She grovels, she hisses, she stings. Butio 
woe to those who in disgust shall venture to 
crush her. And happy are those who, having 
dared to receive her in her degraded and 
frightful shape, shall at length be rewarded by 
her in the time of her beauty and her glory ! 15 

There is only one cure for the evils which 
newly acquired freedom produces ; and that 
cure is freedom. When a prisoner first leaves 
his cell he cannot bear the light of day ; he is 
unable to discriminate colors, or recognize 20 
faces. But the remedy is, not to remand him 
into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the 
rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and 
liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations 
which have become half blind in the house of 25 
bondage. But let them gaze on, and they 
will soon be able to bear it. In a few years 



80 MILTON. 

men learn to reason. The extreme violence 
of opinions subsides. Hostile theories correct 
each other. The scattered elements of truth 
cease to contend, and begin to coalesce. And 

5 at length a system of justice and order is 
educed out of the chaos. 

Many politicians of our time are in the habit 
of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, 
that no people ought to be free till they are 

10 fit to use their freedom. The maxim is 
worthy of the fool in the old story, who 
resolved not to go into the water till he had 
learned to swim. If men are to wait for 
liberty till they become wise and good in 

15 slavery, they may indeed wait forever. 

Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of 
the conduct of Milton, and the other wise and 
good men who, in spite of much that was 
ridiculous and hateful in the conduct of their 

20 associates, stood firmly by the cause of public 
liberty. We are not aware that the poet has 
been charged with personal participation in 
any of the blamable excesses of that time. 
The favorite topic of his enemies is the line of 

25 conduct which he pursued with regard to the 
execution of the king. Of that celebrated 
proceeding we by no means approve. Still 



MILTON. 8 1 

we must say, in justice to the many eminent 
persons who concurred in it, and in justice 
more particularly to the eminent person who 
defended it, that nothing can be more absurd 
than the imputations which, for the last 5 
hundred and sixty years, it has been the 
fashion to cast upon the Regicides. We have, 
throughout, abstained from appealing to first 
principles. We will not appeal to them now. 
We recur again to the parallel case of theio 
Revolution. What essential distinction can be 
drawn between the execution of the father and 
the deposition of the son? What constitu- 
tional maxim is there which applies to the 
former and not to the latter? The king cams 
do no wrong. If so, James was as innocent 
as Charles could have been. The minister, 
only, ought to be responsible for the acts of 
the sovereign. If so, why not impeach Jeffreys 
and retain James? The person of a king is 20 
sacred. Was the person of James considered 
sacred at the Boyne? To discharge cannon 

7. Regicides. The sixty-seven men who formed the court of justice 
which tried Charles I. Upon the return of the Stuarts many of them were 
executed, but three escaped to America. See Hawthorne's story, " The 
Gray Champion." 

19. Jeffreys, ''1648-1689.) Chief Justice under James II. He was 
noted for his cruelty and condemned over three hundred persons to 
death at the so-called " bloody assizes." 

22. Boyne. A river in Ireland where in 1690 the battle was fought in 
which William of Orange defeated James II. 



82 MILTON. 

against an army in which a king is known to 
be posted is to approach pretty near to 
regicide. Charles, too, it should always be 
remembered, was put to death by men who 

shad been exasperated by the hostilities of 
several years, and who had never been bound 
to him by any other tie than that which was 
common to them with all their fellow-citizens. 
Those who drove James from his throne, who 

10 seduced his army, who alienated his friends, 
who first imprisoned him in his palace, and 
then turned him out of it, who broke in upon 
his very slumbers by imperious messages, who 
pursued him with fire and sword from one 

15 part of the empire to another, who hanged, 
drew, and quartered his adherents, and 
attainted his innocent heir, were his nephew 
and his two daughters. When we reflect on 
all these things, we are at a loss to conceive 

20 how the same persons who, on the 5 th of 
November, thank God for wonderfully con- 
ducting his servant William, and for making 
all opposition fall before him, until he became 
our king and governor, can, on the 30th of 

17. William of Orange. 

18. Mary, who married William, and Anne, the future queen, who took 
his part. 

21. On the 5th of November William landed in England. 



MILTON. 83 

January, contrive to be afraid that the blood 
of the Royal Martyr may be visited on them- 
selves and their children. 

We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution 
of Charles; not because the constitutions 
exempts the king from responsibility, for we 
know that all such maxims, however excellent, 
have their exceptions ; nor because we feel 
any particular interest in his character, for we 
think that his sentence describes him with 10 
perfect justice as " a tyrant, a traitor, a 
murderer, and a public enemy;" but because 
we are convinced that the measure was most 
injurious to the cause of freedom. He whom 
it removed was a captive and a hostage; his is 
heir, to whom the allegiance of every Royalist 
was instantly transferred, was at large. The 
Presbyterians could never have been perfectly 
reconciled to the father; they had no such 
rooted enmity to the son. The great body of 20 
the people, also, contemplated that proceeding 
with feelings which, however unreasonable, no 
government could safely venture to outrage. 

But though we think the conduct of the 
Regicides blamable, that of Milton appears to 25 
us in a very different light. The deed was 

1. Charles I. was executed on the 30th of January, 1649. 



84 MILTON. 

done. It could not be undone. The evil was 
incurred ; and the object was to render it as 
small as possible. We censure the chiefs of 
the army for not yielding to the popular 

5 opinion; but we cannot censure Milton for 
wishing to change that opinion. The very 
feeling which would have restrained us from 
committing the act would have led us, after it 
had been committed, to defend it against the 

10 ravings of servility and superstition. For the 
sake of public liberty we wish that the thing 
had not been done while the people disap- 
proved of it. But, for the sake of public 
liberty, we should also have wished the people 

15 to approve of it when it was done. If any- 
thing more were wanting to the justification of 
Milton, the book of Salmasius would furnish 
it. That miserable performance is now with 
justice considered only as a beacon to word- 

20 catchers, who wish to become statesmen. 
The celebrity of the man who refuted it, 
the " y£neae magni dextra," gives it all its 
fame with the present generation. In that age 
the state of things was different. It was then 

17. Salmasius, (1588-1653.) The French scholar who wrote the 
" Defence of Charles I." 

22. j*Eneid X., 833. A proverbial expression for the fate of an 
obscure person who suffers at the hands of a famous one. " Thou 
fallest by the right hand of the great JEneas." 



MILTON. 85 

not fully understood how vast an interval 
separates the mere classical scholar from the 
political philosopher. Nor can it be doubted 
that a treatise which, bearing the name of so 
eminent a critic, attacked the fundamentals 
principles of all free governments, must, if 
suffered to remain unanswered, have produced 
a most pernicious effect on the public mind. 
We wish to add a few words relative to 
another subject, on which the enemies of 10 
Milton delight to dwell, — his conduct during 
the adminstration of the Protector. That an 
enthusiastic votary of liberty should accept 
office under a military usurper seems, no 
doubt, at first sight extraordinary. But all 15 
the circumstances in which the country was 
then placed were extraordinary. The ambi- 
tion of Oliver Cromwell was of no vulgar kind. 
He never seems to have coveted despotic power. 
He at first fought sincerely and manfully for 20 
the parliament, and never deserted it till it had 
deserted its duty. If he dissolved it by force, 
it was not till he found that the few members 
who remained after so many deaths, sessions, 
and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate 25 
to themselves a power which they held only in 

12. Protector. The title assumed by Cromwell. 



86 MILTON. 

trust, and to inflict upon England the curse of 
a Venetian oligarchy. But even when thus 
placed by violence at the head of affairs, he 
did not assume unlimited power. He gave 

5 the country a constitution far more perfect 
than any which had at that time been known 
in the world. He reformed the representative 
system in a manner which has extorted praise 
even from Lord Clarendon. For himself he 

10 demanded, indeed, the first place in the 
Commonwealth ; but with powers scarcely so 
great as those of a Dutch stadtholder or an 
American president. He gave the Parliament 
a voice in the appointment of ministers, and 

15 left to it the whole legislative authority, not 
even reserving to himself a veto on its enact- 
ments ; and he did not require that the chief 
magistracy should be hereditary in his family. 
Thus far, we think, if the circumstances of the 

20 time and the opportunities which he had of 
aggrandizing himself be fairly considered, he 
will not lose by comparison with Washington 
or Bolivar. Had his moderation been met 
by corresponding moderation, there is no 

2. Venetian oligarchy. At the end of the thirteenth century Venice 
fell completely into the hands of a few despots. 

12. stadtholder. Governor of a province. 

23. Bolivar. The leader of the revolt against Spanish rule by the 
South American colonies. 



MILTON. 87 

reason to think that he would have over- 
stepped the line which he had traced for 
himself. But when he found that his Parlia- 
ments questioned the authority under which 
they met, and that he was in danger of being 5 
deprived of the restricted power which was 
absolutely necessary to his personal safety, 
then it must be acknowledged he adopted a 
more arbitrary policy. 

Yet, though we believe that the intentions 10 
of Cromwell were at first honest, though we 
believe that he was driven from the noble 
course which he had marked out for himself 
by the almost irresistible force of circum- 
stances, though we admire, in common with 15 
all men of all parties, the ability and energy of 
his splendid administration, we are not plead- 
ing for arbitrary and lawless power, even in 
his hands. We know that a good constitution 
is infinitely better than the best despot. But 20 
we suspect, that at the time of which we speak, 
the violence of religious and political enmities 
rendered a stable and happy settlement next 
to impossible. The choice lay, not between 
Cromwell and liberty, but between Cromwell 25 
and the Stuarts. That Milton chose well no 
man can doubt who fairly compares the events 



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90 MILTON. 

degrading insults and her more degrading 
gold. The caresses of harlots and the jests 
of buffoons regulated the policy of the state. 
The government had just ability enough to 

5 deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. 
The principles of liberty were the scoff of 
every grinning courtier, and the Anathema 
Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every 
high place, worship was paid to Charles and 

10 James, Belial and Moloch; and England pro- 
pitiated those obscene and cruel idols with the 
blood of her best and bravest children. Crime 
succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, 
till the race, accursed of God and man, was a 

15 second time driven forth, to wander on the face 
of the earth, and to be a byword and a shaking 
of the head to the nations. 

Most of the remarks which we have hitherto 
made on the public character of Milton apply 

20 to him only as one of a large body. We shall 
proceed to notice some of the pecularities 
which distinguished him from his contempora- 
ries. And for that purpose it is necessary to 
take a short survey of the parties into which 

25 the political world was at that time divided. 

7. Anathema Maranatha. A form of denunciation found in I. Cor. 
XVI. 22, meaning " Let him be accursed, the Lord cometh." 
10. Belial and Moloch. Idols of the Ammonites. 



MILTON. 9 1 

We must premise that our observations are 
intended to apply only to those who adhered, 
from a sincere preference, to one or to the 
other side. In days of public commotion 
every faction, like an Oriental army, is attended 5 
by a crowd of camp followers, a useless and 
heartless rabble, who prowl round its line of 
march in the hope of picking up something 
under its protection, but desert it in the day of 
battle, and often join to exterminate it after aio 
defeat. England, at the time of which we are 
treating, abounded with fickle and selfish poli- 
ticians, who transferred their support to every 
government as it rose ; who kissed the hand of 
the king in 1640, and spat in his face in 1649,15 
who shouted with equal glee when Cromwell 
was inaugurated in Westminster Hall, and 
when he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn ; 
who dined on calves' heads, or stuck up oak 
branches, as circumstances altered, without 20 
the slightest shame or repugnance. These we 
leave out of the account. We take our esti- 
mate of parties from those who really deserve 
to be called partisans. 

We would speak first of the Puritans, the 25 

19. calves' heads were used by the Whigs as an emblem of Charles I. 

20. oak branches. Charles II. once concealed himself in an oak tree 
when he was trying to escape from England. On his restoration the oak 
branch was used as the royal emblem for festivals. 



92 MILTON. 

most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which 
the world has ever produced. The odious and 
ridiculous parts of their character lie on the 
surface. He that runs may read them ; nor 

5 have they been wanting attentive and mali- 
cious observers to point them out. For many 
years after the Restoration they were the 
theme of unmeasured invective and derision. 
They were exposed to the utmost licentious- 

loness of the press and of the stage, at the 
time when the press and the stage were most 
licentious. They were not men of letters ; they 
were, as a body, unpopular; they could not 
defend themselves ; and the public would not 

is take them under its protection. They were 
therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the 
tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. 
The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their 
sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff pos- 

2oture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, 
the scriptural phrases which they introduced 
on every occasion, their contempt of human 
learning, their detestation of polite amusements, 
were indeed fair game for the laughers. But 

25 it is not from the laughers alone that the 
philosophy of history is to be learned. And 
he who approaches this subject should care- 



MILTON. 93 

fully guard against the influence of that potent 
ridicule which has already misled so many 
excellent writers. 



[ Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio 
Che mortali perigli in se contiene: 
Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio, 
Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene. 



Those who roused the people to resistance ; 
who directed their measures through a long 
series of eventful years; who formed, out ofio 
the most unpromising materials, the finest 
army that Europe had ever seen ; who 
trampled down king, church, and aristocracy; 
who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition 
and rebellion, made the name of England 15 
terrible to every nation on the face of the 
earth, — were no vulgar fanatics. Most of 
their absurdities were mere external badges, 
like the signs of freemasonry, or the dresses 
of friars. We regret that these badges were 20 
not more attractive. We regret that a body 
to whose courage and talents mankind has 
owed inestimable obligations, had not the 

7. Tasso's " Gerusalemme Liberata." XV., 57. 

" This is the source of laughter and the stream 25 

Which mortal perils in itself contains; 
Now here to restrain in bonds our desire, 
And resolve to be strong becomes us." 

20. friar. A Latin word meaning brother and applied to the four 
mendicant order of monks. 



94 MILTON. 

lofty elegance which distinguished some of the 
adherents of Charles I., or the easy good 
breeding for which the court of Charles II. 
was celebrated. But if we must make our 

5 choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the play, 
turn from the specious caskets which contain 
only the death's-head and the fool's head, and 
fix on the plain leaden chest which conceals 
the treasure. 

10 The Puritans were men whose minds had 
derived a peculiar character from the daily 
contemplation of superior beings and eternal 
interests. Not content with acknowledging, 
in general terms, an overruling Providence, 

15 they habitually ascribed every event to the 
will of the Great Being, for whose power 
nothing was too vast, for whose inspection 
nothing was too minute. To know Him, to 
serve Him, to enjoy Him, was with them the 

20 great end of existence. They rejected with 
contempt the ceremonious homage which 
other sects substituted for the pure worship of 
the soul. Instead of catching occasional 
glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring 

2 5 veil, they aspired to gaze full on the intoler- 

5. Bassanio. " Merchant of Venice," Act III., scene 2. In order to 
win Portia for his wife, he is obliged to choose among three caskets the one 
that contains her portrait. 



MILTON. 95 

able brightness, and to commune with Him 
face to face. Hence originated their contempt 
for terrestrial distinctions. The difference 
between the greatest and the meanest of man- 
kind seemed to vanish, when compared with 5 
the boundless interval which separated the 
whole race from Him on whom their own 
eyes were constantly fixed. They recognized 
no title to superiority but His favor; and, 
confident of that favor, they despised all the 10 
accomplishments and all the dignities of the 
world. If they were unacquainted with the 
works of philosophers and poets, they were 
deeply read in the oracles of God. If their 
names were not found in the registers of 15 
heralds, they were recorded in the Book of 
Life. If their steps were not accompanied 
by a splendid train of menials, legions of 
ministering angels had charge over them. 
Their palaces were houses not made with 20 
hands ; their diadems, crowns of glory which 
should never fade away. On the rich and the 
eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked 
down with contempt ; for they esteemed them- 
selves rich in a more precious treasure, and 25 
eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles 
by the right of an earlier creation, and priests 



96 MILTON. 

by the imposition of a mightier hand. The 
very meanest of them was a being to whose 
fate a mysterious and terrible importance 
belonged, on whose slightest action the spirits 

5 of light and darkness looked with anxious 
interest; who had been destined, before 
heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a 
felicity which should continue when heaven 
and earth should have passed away. Events 

10 which shortsighted politicians ascribed to 
earthly causes had been ordained on his 
account. For his sake empires had risen, 
and flourished, and decayed. For his sake 
the Almighty had proclaimed His will by the 

is pen of the Evangelist and the harp of the 
prophet. He had been wrested by no common 
deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. 
He had been ransomed by the sweat of no 
vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly 

20 sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had 
been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, 
that the dead had risen, that all nature had 
shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring 
God. 

25 Thus the Puritan was made up of two 
different men; the one all self-abasement, 

i. Imposition. Priests are ordained by the "imposition" of the 
bishop's hands. 



MILTON. 97 

penitence, gratitude, passion ; the other proud, 
calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated 
himself in the dust before his Maker; but he 
set his foot on the neck of his king. In his 
devotional retirement, he prayed with convul-5 
sions, and groans, and tears. He was half 
maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. 
He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting 
whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the 
Beatific Vision ; or woke screaming from 10 
dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he 
thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of 
the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried 
in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid 
his face from him. But when he took his seat 15 
in the council, or girt on his sword for war 
these tempestuous workings of the soul had 
left no perceptible trace behind them. People 
who saw nothing of the godly but their 
uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them 20 
but their groans and their whining hymns, 
might laugh at them. But those had little 
reason to laugh who encountered them in the 
hall of debate or in the field of battle. These 

10. Beatific Vision. The direct sight of God in Mediaeval theology. 
A term often applied to the Book of Revelation. 

11. Sir Henry Vane, (1612-1662.) A Puritan governor of Massachu- 
setts who returned to England and was finally beheaded. 

13. Fleetwood. Son-in-law of Cromwell and general in his army. 



98 MILTON. 

fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a 
coolness of judgment and an immutability of 
purpose which some writers have thought 
inconsistent with their religious zeal, but 

5 which were in fact the necessary effects of it. 
The intensity of their feelings on one subject 
made them tranquil on every other. One 
overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself 
pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death 

10 had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. 
They had their smiles and their tears, their 
raptures and their sorrows, but not for the 
things of this world. Enthusiasm had made 
them Stoics, had cleared their minds from 

15 every vulgar passion and prejudice, and 
raised them above the influence of danger and 
of corruption. It sometimes might lead them 
to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose 
unwise means. They went through the world, 

20 like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail, 
crushing and trampling down oppressors, 
mingling with human beings, but having 
neither part nor lot in human infirmities ; 
insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain ; 

14. Stoics. A philosophical sect who held that all sensations, whether 
of pleasure or pain, should be a matter of indifference to men. 

20. Talus. Spencer's " Faerie Queene." V., 1. An iron man, repre- 
senting power, was given to Sir Artegal, the personification of justice, with 
which to thresh out falsehood and unfold truth. 



MILTON. 99 

not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be 
withstood by any barrier. 

Such we believe to have been the character 
of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity 
of their manners. We dislike the sullen glooms 
of their domestic habits. We acknowledge 
that the tone of their minds was often injured 
by straining after things too high for mortal 
reach ; and we know that, in spite of their 
hatred of Popery, they too often fell into theio 
worst vices of that bad system, — intolerance 
and extravagant austerity ; that they had 
their anchorites and their crusades, their 
Dunstans and their DeMontforts, their Dom- 
inies and their Escobars. Yet, when all is 
circumstances are taken into consideration, we 
do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, 
a wise, an honest, and a useful body. 

The Puritians espoused the cause of civil 
liberty mainly because it was the cause of relig- 20 
ion. There was another party, by no means 
numerous, but distinguished by learning and 

14. St. Dunstan, (924-988.) Archbishop of Canterbury. 

14. Montfort, (1150-1226.) A French nobleman noted for the cruelty 
with which he persecuted the Albigenses who seceded from the Roman 
church. 

14. Dominic. Founder of the Dominican Friars and associate of 
Mountfort. 

15 Escobar, (1589-1669. ) The Spanish Jesuit who set forth the doc- 
trine that the end justifies the means 



I OO MILTON. 

ability, which acted with them on very 
different principles. We speak of those whom 
Cromwell used to call the Heathens, men who 
were, in the phraseology of that time, doubting 
5 Thomases or careless Gallios with regard to 
religious subjects, but passionate worshippers 
of freedom. Heated by the study of ancient 
literature, they set up their country as their 
idol, and proposed to themselves the heroes 

10 of Plutarch, as their examples. They seem to 
have borne some resemblance to the Brisso- 
tines of the French Revolution. But it is not 
very easy to draw the line of distinction 
between them and their devout associates, 

15 whose tone and manner they sometimes found 
it convenient to affect, and sometimes, it is 
probable, imperceptibly adopted. 

We now come to the Royalists. We shall 
attempt to speak of them, as we have spoken 

20 of their antagonists, with perfect candor. We 
shall not charge upon a whole party the pro- 
fligacy and baseness of the horse boys, gam- 
blers, and bravoes, whom the hope of license 
and plunder attracted from all the dens of 

5. Thomases. John XX. 24, 25. 
5. Gallios. Acts XVIII., 17. 

10. Plutarch. A Greek biographer of the first century. 

11. Brissotines. The followers of Bnssot, who, with the Girondists, 
formed the moderate republican party in the French Revolution. 



MILTON. IOI 

Whitefriars to the standard of Charles, and 
who disgraced their associates by excesses 
which, under the stricter discipline of the 
parliamentary armies, was never tolerated. 
We will select a more favorable specimen. 5 
Thinking as we do that the cause of the king 
was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet 
cannot refrain from looking with complacency 
on the character of the honest old Cavaliers. 
We feel a national pride in comparing them 10 
with the instruments which the despots of 
other countries are compelled to employ; 
with the mutes who throng their antechambers, 
and the Janissaries who mount guard at their 
gates. Our Royalist countrymen were not is 
heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing at every 
step, simpering at every word. They were 
not mere machines for destruction, dressed up 
in uniforms, caned into skill, intoxicated into 
valor, defending without love, destroying with- 20 
out hatred. There was a freedom in their 
subserviency, a nobleness in their very degra- 
dation. The sentiment of individual indepen- 
dence was strong within them. They were 

1. Whitefriars. A district of London formerly notorious as a resort 
for criminals on account of an old privelege preventing the arrest of its 
inhabitants. 

14 Janissaries. A body of Turkish troops organized in the fourteenth 
century as the Sultan's body-guard, and composed mostly of Christian 
captives 



102 MILTON. 

indeed misled, but by no base or selfish 
motive. Compassion and romantic honor, the 
prejudices of childhood, and the venerable 
names of history, threw over them a spell 

6 potent as that of Duessa ; and, like the Red 
Cross Knight, they thought that they were 
doing battle for an injured beauty, while they 
defended a false and loathsome sorceress. In 
truth, they scarcely entered at all into the 

10 merits of the political question. It was not 
for a treacherous king or an intolerant church 
that they fought, but for the old banner which 
had waved in so many battles over the heads 
of their fathers, and for the altars at which they 

15 had received the hands of their brides. 
Though nothing could be more erroneous than 
their political opinions, they possessed in a far 
greater degree than their adversaries, those 
qualities which are the grace of private life. 

20 With many of the vices of the Round Table, 
they had also many of its virtues, — courtesy, 
generosity, veracity, tenderness, and respect 
for women. They had far more both of pro- 
found and of polite learning than the Puritians. 

5. Duessa A character in the " Faerie Queene," Book I , personi- 
fying false faith. 

6 Red Cross Knight A principal character in the same book repre- 
senting St George of England. 

20 vices. Described in Tennyson's " Last Tournament." 



MILTON. 103 

Their manners were more engaging, their tem- 
pers more amiable, their tastes more elegant, 
and their households more cheerful. 

Milton did not strictly belong to any of the 
classes which we have described. He wasnots 
a Puritan. He was not a freethinker. He 
was not a Royalist. In his character the 
noblest qualities of every party were combined 
in harmonious union. From the Parliament 
and from the court, from the conventicle and 10 
from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and 
sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from 
the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, 
his nature selected and drew to itself whatever 
was great and good, while it rejected all the 15 
base and pernicious ingredients by which those 
finer elements were defiled. Like the Puritans, 
he lived 

As ever in his great Taskmaster's eye. 

Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed 20 
on an Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. 
And hence he acquired their contempt of 
external circumstances, their fortitude, their 
tranquillity, their inflexible resolution. But 

10 Conventicle. The Non-conformists The word originally meant 
a cabal among the monks of a monastery. 

11 cloister. Episcopalians. 

19. From Milton's seventh sonnet on his Twenty-third Birthday. 



104 MILTON. 

not the coolest sceptic or the most profane 
scoffer was more perfectly free from the con- 
tagion of their frantic delusions, their savage 
manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of 

fi science, and their aversion to pleasure. Hat- 
ing tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had 
nevertheless all the estimable and ornamental 
qualities which were almost entirely monopo- 
lized by the party of the tyrant. There was 

10 none who had a stronger sense of the value of 
literature, a finer relish for every elegant 
amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of 
honor and love. Though his opinions were 
democratic, his tastes and his associations were 

15 such as harmonize best with monarchy and 
aristocracy. He was under the influence of all 
the feelings by which the gallant Cavaliers 
were misled. But of those feelings he was the 
master and not the slave. Like the hero of 

20 Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures of fascina- 
tion ; but he was not fascinated. He listened 
to the song of the Sirens ; yet he glided by 
without being seduced to their fatal shore. 
He tasted the cup of Circe ; but he bore about 

19. hero. Ulysses. 

22 Sirens. Maidens who lured passing mariners to their inland home 
by their beautiful singing, and then destroyed them. 

24. Circe. A sorceress who changed into swine Ulysses's companions. 



MILTON. IO5 

him a sure antidote against the effects of its 
bewitching sweetness. The illusions which 
captivated his imagination never impaired his 
reasoning powers. The statesman was proof 
against the splendor, the solemnity, and the 5 
romance which enchanted the poet. Any per- 
son who will contrast the sentiments expressed 
in his treatises on Prelacy with the exquisite 
lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music 
in the " Penseroso," which was published 10 
about the same time, will understand our 
meaning. This is an inconsistency which, 
more than anything else, raises his character 
in our estimation, because it shows how many 
private tastes and feelings he sacrificed in 15 
order to do what he considered his duty to 
mankind. It is the very struggle of the noble 
Othello. His heart relents; but his hand is 
firm. He does naught in hate, but all in 
honor. He kisses the beautiful deceiver 20 
before he destroys her. 

That from which the public character of 
Milton derives its great and peculiar splendor 
still remains to be mentioned. If he exerted 
himself to overthrow a foresworn king and a 25 
persecuting hierarchy, he exerted himself in 

18 Othello. Act V., scene 2. 



106 MILTON. 

conjunction with others. But the glory of the 
battle which he fought for the species of 
freedom which is the most valuable, and 
which was then the least understood, the 
5 freedom of the human mind, is all his own. 
Thousands and tens of thousands among his 
contemporaries raised their voices against ship 
money and the Star Chamber. But there 
were few indeed who discerned the more 

10 fearful evils of moral and intellectual slavery, 
and the benefits which would result from the 
liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise 
of private judgment. These were the objects 
which Milton justly conceived to be the most 

15 important. He was desirous that the people 
should think for themselves as well as tax 
themselves, and should be emancipated from 
the dominion of prejudice as well as from that 
of Charles. He knew that those who, with 

20 the best intentions, overlooked these schemes 
of reform, and contented themselves with 
pulling down the king and imprisoning the 
malignants, acted like the heedless brothers in 
his own poem, who, in their eagerness to 

25 disperse the train of the sorcerer, neglected 
the means of liberating the captive. They 

23. Malignants A term applied to the royalists. 



MILTON. 107 

thought only of conquering when they should 
have thought of disenchanting. 

" Oh, ye mistook, ye should have snatched his wand, 
And bound him fast; without his wand reversed 
And backward mutters of dissevering power, 5 

We cannot free the Lady that sits here 
In stony fetters fix'd, and motionless." 

To reverse the rod, to spell the charm 
backward, to break the ties which bound a 
stupefied people to the seat of enchantment, 10 
was the noble aim of Milton. To this all his 
public conduct was directed. For this he 
joined the Presbyterians ; for this he forsook 
them. He fought their perilous battle ; but 
he turned away with disdain from their 15 
insolent triumph. He saw that they, like 
those whom they had vanquished, were hostile 
to the liberty of thought. He therefore 
joined the Independents, and called upon 
Cromwell to break the secular chain, and to 20 
save free conscience from the paw of the Pres- 
byterian wolf. With a view to the same great 
object, he attacked the licensing system, in 

7. " Comus," 815-819. 

20 secular chain. Alliance between church and state. 

22 Presbyterian wolf. An expression used by Milton in " Lycidas," 
line 128, and in the Sonnet to Cromwell. 

23 licensing system In his " Areopagitica," a plea for the liberty of 
unlicensed printing 



108 MILTON. 

that sublime treatise which every statesman 
should wear as a sign upon his hand and as 
frontlets between his eyes. His attacks were, 
in general, directed less against particular 

5 abuses than against those deeply seated errors 
on which almost all abuses are founded, — 
the servile worship of eminent men and the 
irrational dread of innovation. 

That he might shake the foundations of 

10 these debasing sentiments more effectually, he 
always selected for himself the boldest literary 
services. He never came up in the rear, when 
the outworks had been carried and the breach 
entered. He pressed into the forlorn hope. 

15 At the beginning of the changes, he wrote 
with incomparable energy and eloquence 
against the bishops. But, when his opinion 
seemed likely to prevail, he passed on to 
other subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the 

20 crowd of writers who now hastened to insult 
a falling party. There is no more hazardous 
enterprise than that of bearing the torch of 
truth into those dark and infected recesses in 
which no light has ever shone. But it was 

25 the choice and the pleasure of Milton to 
penetrate the noisome vapors, and to brave 

3. frontlet. Referring to an old Jewish custom of wearing phylac- 
teries upon the forehead. 



MILTON. 109 

the terrible explosion. Those who most 
disapprove of his opinions must respect the 
hardihood with which he maintained them. 
He, in general, left to others the credit of 
expounding and defending the popular parts 5 
of his religious and political creed. He took 
his own stand upon those which the great 
body of his countrymen reprobated as criminal, 
or derided as paradoxical. He stood up for 
divorce and regicide. He attacked the pre- 10 
vailing systems of education. His radiant and 
beneficent career resembled that of the god of 
light and fertility: — 

"Nitor in adversum; nee me, qui aetera, vincit 
Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi." 16 

It is to be regretted that the prose writings 
of Milton should, in our time, be so little read. 
As compositions, they deserve the attention of 
every man who wishes to become acquainted 
with the full power of the English language. 20 
They abound with passages compared with 
which the finest declamations of Burke sink 
into insignificance. They are a perfect field 

15. Ovid's " Metamorphoses," II., 71, 73. " I contend against opposing 
circumstances. That force which subdues other things conquers not me, 
and I am borne on a way contrary to the swiftly moving earth." 

22 Edmund Burke, (^728-1797.) One of the greatest of English 
orators and statesmen. Noted for the lofty splendor of his style, and a 
firm friend of the American colonies. 



IIO MILTON. 

of cloth of gold. The style is stiff with 
gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the 
earlier books of the " Paradise Lost" has the 
great poet ever risen higher than in those 

5 parts of his controversial works in which his 
feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in 
bursts of devotional and lyric rapture. It is, 
to borrow his own majestic language, " a 
sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping 

10 symphonies." 

We had intended to look more closely at 
these performances, to analyze the peculiari- 
ties of the diction, to dwell at some length on 
the sublime wisdom of the " Areopagitica " 

is and the nervous rhetoric of the " Iconoclast," 
and to point out some of those magnificent 
passages which occur in the " Treatise of 
Reformation," and the " Animadversions on 
the Remonstrant." But the length to which 

20 our remarks have already extended renders 
this impossible. 

We must conclude. And yet we can 
scarcely tear ourselves away from the subject. 
The days immediately following the publishing 

15. Iconoclast. A reply to a book portraying the King in his solitude 
and suffering. 

18 Animadversions on the Remonstrant. A dialogue in which 
Milton's adversary is made to ask questions to which he replies. 



MILTON. I I I 

of this relic of Milton appear to be peculiarly 
set apart, and consecrated to his memory. 
And we shall scarcely be censured if, on his 
festival, we be found lingering near his shrine, 
how worthless soever may be the offering 5 
which we bring to it. While this book lies on 
our table, we seem to be contemporaries of 
the writer. We are transported a hundred and 
fifty years back. We can almost fancy that 
we are visiting him in his small lodging; that 10 
we see him sitting at the old organ beneath 
the faded green hangings ; that we can catch 
the quick twinkle of his eyes, rolling in vain to 
find the day ; that we are reading in the lines 
of his noble countenance the proud and is 
mournful history of his glory and his affliction. 
We image to ourselves the breathless silence 
in which we should listen to his slightest word ; 
the passionate veneration with which we should 
kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon it; the 20 
earnestness with which we should endeavor to 
console him, if indeed such a spirit could need 
consolation, for the neglect of an age unworthy 
of his talents and his virtues; the eagerness 
with which we should contest with his daugh-25 
ters, or with his Quaker friend Ellwood, the 

26. Ellwood. A Quaker faithful to Milton in his later years. 



I I 2 MILTON. 

privilege of reading Homer to him, or of tak- 
ing down the immortal accents which flowed 
from his lips. 

These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we 
5 cannot be ashamed of them ; nor shall we be 
sorry if what we have written shall in any 
degree excite them in other minds. We are 
not much in the habit of idolizing either the 
living or the dead. And we think there is no 
10 more certain indication of a weak and ill- 
regulated intellect than that propensity which, 
for want of a better name, we will venture to 
christen Boswellism. But there are a few 
characters which have stood the closest scru- 
tiny and the severest tests, which have been 
tried in the furnace and have proved pure, 
which have been weighed in the balance and 
have not been found wanting, which have been 
declared sterling by the general consent of 
20 mankind, and which are visibly stamped with 
the image and superscripton of the Most High. 
These great men we trust that we know how 
to prize ; and of these was Milton. The 
sight of his books, the sound of his name, are 
25 pleasant to us. His thoughts resemble those 
celestial fruits and flowers which the Virgin 

13 Boswellism. Boswell, the famous biographer of Dr. Johnson, 
fairly worshipped his friend and master. 



MILTON. I I 3 

Martyr of Massinger sent down from the 
gardens of Paradise to the earth, and which 
were distinguished from the productions of 
other soils, not only by superior bloom and 
sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy to 5 
invigorate and to heal. They are powerful 
not only to delight, but to elevate and purify. 
Nor do we envy the man who can study either 
the life or writings of the great poet and pat- 
riot, without aspiring to emulate, not indeed 10 
the sublime works with which his genius has 
enriched our literature, but the zeal with which 
he labored for the public good, the fortitude 
with which he endured every private calamity, 
the lofty disdain with which he looked down 16 
on temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred 
which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the 
faith which he so sternly kept with his country 
and with his fame. 

1. Virgin Martyr. A play by Philip Massinger, one of the 
Elizabethan dramatists. 




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